But there came to Berkeley Hill one day a stranger, an earnest young minister of Charleston, who, having read a magazine article of Osmond Berkeley's in which "the hysterical, unwholesome excitement of evangelistic revivals" was demonstrated to be purely physiological, wished to remonstrate with its author and point out to him that he was grievously mistaken.
One keenly appraising, glance at the embarrassed, awkward young man as he was shown into the library where Berkeley sat in his armchair before the fire, with Margaret at his side reading to him from a just published work by Josiah Royce, made her uncle decide that it would be superfluous to send her from the room—"on account of a creature like this, with no manners, no brains, and an Adam's apple!"
But it was the young man's deadly earnestness in the discussion between these two unequal protagonists that impressed itself upon Margaret's hungry imagination; his courage in coming with what he conceived to be his burning message of truth to such a formidable "enemy to truth" as the famous scholar, Dr. Osmond Berkeley. Evidently, the young man's conscience, in spite of his painful shyness, had lashed him to this visit, more dreadful than a den of lions. There were still, even in these days, it seemed, martyrs for religion.
Now, while Margaret of course recognized the intellectual feebleness of the young minister's side of the question which was under fire, nevertheless, before his visit was concluded, his brow wore for her a halo; his thin little voice was rich music to her quivering nerves; his unsophisticated manner the outward sign of a beautiful simplicity; his Adam's apple a peculiar distinction.
Berkeley, as soon as he found his visitor a bore, made short work of him and got rid of him without ceremony. In Margaret's eyes the young man stood up to his rebuffs like a hero and a martyr.
Her uncle did not notice, upon her return to the library after seeing the young man into the hall, how bright were her eyes, how flushed her cheeks, how sensitive the curve of her lips.
"Ha, ha!" he laughed sardonically, "wouldn't you rather go to hell than have to hear him preach?"
"You laugh like a villain in a melodrama!" retorted Margaret.
"I haven't laughed for twenty years except at damned fools. When did you ever see a melodrama?"
"Aunt Virginia took Harriet and me to see The Two Orphans once."