“Certainly not, my dear. Delight in the Lord’s works in nature, or in the pleasures of the intellect such things as these are right enough in their place, Phoebe. The danger is of putting them into God’s place.”
“Mrs Dolly,” asked Phoebe, gravely, “do you think that when we care very much for a person or a thing, we put it into God’s place?”
“If you care more for it than you do for Him. Not otherwise.”
“How is one to know that?”
“Ask your own heart how you would feel if God demanded it from you.”
“How ought I to feel?”
“Sorry, perhaps; but not resentful. Not as though the Lord had no right to ask this at your hands. Grief is allowed; ’tis murmuring that displeases Him.”
When Mrs Dorothy said this, Phoebe felt conscious of a dim conviction, buried somewhere very deep down, that there was something which she hoped God would not demand from her. She did not know herself what it was. It was not exactly that she would refuse to give it up; but rather that she hoped she would never be called upon to do it—that if she were it would be a very hard thing to do.
Phoebe left the Maidens’ Lodge, and walked slowly across the Park to White-Ladies. She was feeling for the unknown cause of this sentiment of vague soreness at her heart. She had not found it, when a voice broke in upon her meditations.
“Mrs Latrobe?”