I want you to change. Of course I am a brute to say so. I ought to say you are perfect. Another man would, perhaps. But I say, I want you to change." "How am I to oblige you? By joining the church ?" "No; but by asking yourself whether life is not as solemn a thing as your father takes it to be-in which you may be either a blessing or a curse to many. You know you have never done that. You don't care to be better than a bird trimming its feathers, and pecking about after what pleases it. You are discontented with the world because you can't get just the small things that suit your pleasure, not because it's a world where myriads of men and women are ground by wrong and misery, and tainted with pollution." Esther felt her heart swelling with mingled indignation at this liberty, wounded pride at this depreciation, and acute consciousness that she could not contradict what Felix said. He was outrageously ill-bred; but she felt that she should be lowering herself by telling him so, and manifesting her anger: in that way she would be confirming his accusation of a littleness that shrank from severe truth; and, besides, through all her mortification there pierced a sense that this exasperation of Felix against her was more complimentary than any thing in his previous behavior. She had self-command enough to speak with her usual silvery voice. "Pray go on, Mr. Holt. Relieve yourself of these burning truths. I am sure they must be troublesome to carry unuttered." "Yes, they are," said Felix, pausing and standing not far off her. "I can't bear to see you going the way of the foolish women who spoil men's lives. Men can't help loving them, and so they make themselves slaves to the petty desires of petty creatures. That's the way those who might do better spend their lives for naught-get checked in every great effort toil with brain and limb for things that have no more to do with a manly life than tarts and confectionery. That's what makes women a curse; all life is stunted to suit their littleness. That's why I'll never love, if I can help it; and if I love, I'll bear it, and never marry." The tumult of feeling in Esther's mind-mortification, anger, the sense of a terrible power over her that Felix seemed to have as his angry words vibrated through herwas getting almost too much for her self-control. She felt her lips quivering; but her pride, which feared nothing so much as the betrayal of her emotion, helped her to a desperate effort. She pinched her own hand hard to overcome her tremor, and said, in a tone of scorn, "I ought to be very much obliged to you for giving me your confidence so freely." "Ah! now you are offended with me, and disgusted with me. I expected it would be so. A woman doesn't like a man who tells her the truth." "I think you boast a little too much of your truth-telling, Mr. Holt," said Esther, flashing out at last. "That virtue is apt to be easy to people when they only wound others and not themselves. Telling the truth often means no more than taking a liberty." "Yes, I suppose I should have been taking a liberty if I had tried to drag you back by the skirt when I saw you running into a pit." "You should really found a sect. Preaching is your vocation. It is a pity you should ever have an audience of only one." "I see, I have made a fool of myself. I thought you had a more generous mind-that you might be kindled to a better ambition. But I've set your vanity aflame-nothing else. I'm going. Good-by." looking at him. did He seemed to be adjustEsther longed to be able compel him to stay, that "Good-by," said Esther, not not open the door immediately. ing his cap and pulling it down. to throw a lasso round him and she might say what she chose to him; her very anger made this departure irritating, especially as he had the last word, and that a very bitter one. But soon the latch was lifted, and the door closed behind him. She ran up to her bedroom and burst into tears. Poor maiden! There was a strange contradiction of impulses in her mind in those first moments. She could not bear that Felix should not respect her, yet she could not bear that he should see her bend before his denunciation. She revolted against his assumption of superiority, yet she felt herself in a new kind of subjection to him. He was ill-bred, he was rude, he had taken an unwarrantable liberty; yet his indignant words were a tribute to her; he thought she was worth more pains than the women of whom he took no notice. It was excessively impertinent in him to tell her of his resolving not to love, not to marry-as if she cared about that; as if he thought himself likely to inspire an affection that would incline any woman to marry him after such eccentric steps as he had taken. Had he ever for a moment imagined that she had thought of him in the light of a man who would make love to her? .... But did he love her one little bit, and was that the reason why he wanted her to change? Esther felt less angry at that form of freedom; though she was quite sure that she did not love him, and that she could never love any one who was so much of a pedagogue and a master, to say nothing of his oddities. But he wanted her to change. For the first time in her life Esther felt herself seriously shaken in her self-contentment. She knew there was a mind to which she appeared trivial, narrow, selfish. Every word Felix had said to her seemed to have burnt itself into her memory. She felt as if she should for evermore be haunted by self-criticism, and never do any thing to satisfy those fancies on which she had shaply piqued herself before without being dogged by inward questions. Her father's desire for her conversion had never moved her; she saw that he adored her all the while, and he never checked her unregenerate acts as if they degraded her on earth, but only mourned over them G as unfitting her for heaven. Unfitness for heaven (spoken of as 66 Jerusalem" and "glory"), the prayers of a good little father, whose thoughts and motives seemed to her like the "Life of Dr. Doddridge," which she was content to leave unread, did not attack her self-respect and self-satisfaction. But now she had been stung-stung even into a new consciousness concerning her father. Was it true that his life was so much worthier than her own? She could not change for any thing Felix said, but she told herself he was mistaken if he supposed her incapable of generous thoughts. She heard her father coming into the house. She dried her tears, tried to recover herself hurriedly, and went down to him. "You want your tea, father; how your forehead burns!" she said, gently, kissing his brow, and then putting her cool hand on it. Mr. Lyon felt a little surprise; such spontaneous tenderness was not quite common with her; it reminded him of her mother. "My sweet child," he said, gratefully, thinking with wonder of the treasures still left in our fallen nature. CHAPTER XI. Truth is the precious harvest of the earth. The noisome cankerworm and caterpillar, Locusts, and all the swarming foul-born broods, Until men said, What profits it to sow? FELIX was going to Sproxton that Sunday afternoon. He always enjoyed his walk to that outlying hamlet; it took him (by a short cut) through a corner of Sir Maximus Debarry's park; then across a piece of common, broken here and there into red ridges below dark masses of furze; and for the rest of the way alongside the canal, where the Sunday peacefulness that seemed to rest on the bordering meadows and pastures was hardly broken if a horse pulled into sight along the towing path, and a boat, with a little curl of blue smoke issuing from its tin chimney, came slowly gliding behind. Felix retained something of his boyish impression that the days in a canal-boat were all like Sundays; but the horse, if it had been put to him, would probably have preferred a more Judaic or Scotch rigor with regard to canal - boats, or at least that the Sunday towing should be done by asses, as a lower order. This canal was only a branch of the grand trunk, and ended among the coal-pits, where Felix, crossing a network of black tram-roads, soon came to his destinationthat public institute of Sproxton, known to its frequenters chiefly as Chubb's, but less familiarly as the Sugar Loaf, or the New Pits, this last being the name for the more modern and lively nucleus of the Sproxton hamlet. The other nucleus, known as the Old Pits, also supported its "public," but it had something of the forlorn air of an abandoned capital; and the company at the Blue Cow was of an inferior kind—equal, of course, in the fundamental attributes of humanity, such as desire for beer, but not equal in ability to pay for it. When Felix arrived the great Chubb was standing at the door. Mr. Chubb was a remarkable publican; none of your stock Bonifaces, red, bloated, jolly, and joking. He was thin and sallow, and was never, as his constant guests observed, seen to be the worse (or the better) for liquor; indeed, as among soldiers an eminent general was held to have a charmed life, Chubb was held by the members of the Benefit Club to have a charmed sobriety, a vigilance over his own interest that resisted all narcotics. His very dreams, as stated by himself, had a method in them beyond the waking thoughts of other men. Pharaoh's dream, he observed, was nothing to them; and, as |