When we yield to one temptation we have less power to resist another. Waters entering through the narrowest breach soon make for themselves a wider way. Norah sought relief from uneasy reflection in the very thing which she had so lately given up as wrong.
"I can't go on with this tiresome darning," exclaimed the young servant, flinging a bundle of stockings aside. "I must just have a glance at that book; I must just see if that wretched woman was hanged for murder after all."
So, neglecting her duty, misusing her time, trying to silence her conscience, Norah plunged into the midst of a novel but too well suited to inflame her imagination and corrupt her mind. She was so deep in the interest of the story, that she started with impatient annoyance at the sound of the bell which summoned her up to the drawing-room, to read to her mistress as usual.
[CHAPTER VI.]
HELP IN NEED.
WELL was it for Norah Peele that a quiet time for thinking was thus forced upon her, unwilling as she felt at the moment to lay down her tempting novel, and obey her mistress's summons.
When Norah entered the peaceful room, where the soft light of the shaded lamp fell on Mrs. Martin's placid voice and silvery hair, as she sat with her hands clasped, and a look of much patience in her almost sightless eyes, Norah felt as if she had quitted a glaring theatre, and come into a house of prayer. There was before her one who had long worn the breastplate of righteousness, and fought the good fight of faith, and who would soon receive the victor's crown from Him whom she loved and obeyed.
Norah took up the book which she was accustomed to read, but so pre-occupied was her mind with its own perplexing thoughts, that she began at the first chapter at which she chanced to open the volume, without paying attention to a marker left in the proper place.
"Surely we have heard that before," said Mrs. Martin.
Norah had not attended to one word of what she had been reading.