"You are quoting?"
"Yes, from a book that I know is true. Do you doubt it, Mr. Egerton?"
"Why, Miss Dinsmore, you do not take me for an infidel, surely?"
"No, until to-day I had hoped you were a Christian."
Her eyes were downcast now, and there were tears in her voice as she spoke. He saw he had made a false step and lowered himself in her esteem, yet, remembering his talk with Arthur, he felt certain he could more than retrieve that error. And he grew exultant in the thought of the evident pain the discovery of his unbelief had caused her. "She does care for me; I believe the prize is even now almost within my reach," he said to himself, as they silently pursued their way into the town, no one speaking again until they parted at Miss Stanhope's gate.
Elsie, usually full of innocent mirth and gladness, was very quiet at dinner that day, and Aunt Wealthy, watching her furtively, thought she noticed an unwonted shade of sadness on the fair face.
"What is it, dear?" she asked at length; "something seems to have gone wrong with you."
The young girl replied by repeating the substance of the morning's talk with Mr. Egerton, and expressing her disappointment at the discovery that he was not the Christian man she had taken him to be.
"Perhaps what you have taken in earnest, was but spoken in jest, my child," said Miss Stanhope.
"Ah, auntie, but a Christian surely could not say such things even in jest," she answered, with a little sigh, and a look of sorrowful concern on her face.