After a little silence she said—
"If I wanted to be like what I was before, I should not know how."
"Return to God and He will return to you," said Mr. Fletcher, briefly.
"That is just the very point," said Emily, impatiently. "I don't know how to go to work to return."
"The only way of going to God is in prayer," said Mr. Fletcher. "You know that as well as I do. If you have left off prayer, you must begin it again, and if you are indulging in sin, you must forsake it."
"I never feel like praying now," said Emily. "It was different when I was at home. Everything was so quiet and peaceful there."
"Pray whether you feel like it or not," was the answer. "Your feelings are not of so very much consequence. Act rightly, and you will soon feel rightly. The best, and indeed the only way to bring one's mind and heart to a proper state, is to perform one's known duty."
This was new and not very acceptable doctrine to Emily, who had, been taught by her aunt's precepts, and perhaps a little by her example, to attach altogether too much importance to states of feeling and mental impressions. She would gladly have gone on talking about herself for an hour longer, but Mr. Fletcher gave her no encouragement to do so. He had returned to his book, and when Emily complained that her prayers now never seemed to have any wings, he only answered rather sternly, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."
Janet came in at this moment with her hands full of bright-colored rose berries and cedar leaves, which she had arranged into a bouquet for Kitty, and Emily slipped out and escaped to her own room. Her conscience troubled her more than ever, and again and again she wished she had had the courage to open her mind to Mr. Fletcher, whom she could not help suspecting of knowing already more of her affairs than he chose to tell. "If I had not been so foolish at first," she said to herself, "if I had kept on reading my Bible and praying, as I knew I ought to do, I should never have been drawn into the matter, and I don't believe but that Delia would have had more real regard for me. I believe she loves me well enough now, and she was certainly very kind in helping me about those bills; but I don't think she respects me as she does Lucy and Janet, or even Annette. I heard her say once, 'You all laugh at Annette, and yet she has more sense about some things than any of you. You will never see her laughed into doing anything wrong.'
"Those miserable bills! They were the beginning of all the trouble—no, the first trouble was in being afraid to say my prayers, for fear Delia would laugh at me. And now, here is this affair of hers with Mr. Hugo, and no one knows how it will end, and I dare not say a word for fear of her telling Mrs. Pomeroy of me. I am thankful for one thing—that she does not know anything about the money I found; if she did, I should be her slave in good earnest. But, oh dear, if I only knew what to do!"