Half an hour later, Elsie sat reading in the abode of the vine-covered porch, while her aunt enjoyed her customary after-dinner nap. She presently heard the gate swing to, and the next moment Mr. Egerton was helping himself to a seat by her side.
"I hope I don't intrude, Miss Dinsmore," he began, assuming a slightly embarrassed air.
"Oh, no, not at all," she answered, closing her book; "but aunt is lying down, and—"
"Ah, no matter; I wouldn't have her disturbed for the world; and in fact I am rather glad of the opportunity of seeing you alone. I—I have been thinking a good deal of that talk we had this morning, and—I am really quite shocked at the sentiments I then expressed, though they were spoken more than half in jest. Miss Dinsmore, I am not a Christian, but—but I want to be, and would, if I only knew how; and I've come to you to learn the way; for somehow I seem to feel that you could make the thing plainer to me than any one else. What must I do first?"
Glad tears shone in the soft eyes she lifted to his face as she answered, "'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.' Believe, 'only believe.'"
"But I must do something?"
"'Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.'"
The man was an arrant knave and hypocrite, simulating anxiety about his soul's salvation only for the purpose of ingratiating himself with Elsie; but "the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God," pricked him for the moment, as she wielded it in faith and prayer. What ways, what thoughts were his! Truly they had need to be forsaken if he would hope ever to see that holy city of which we are told "There shall in no wise enter it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie."
For a moment he sat silent and abashed before the gentle, earnest young Christian, feeling her very purity a reproach, and fearing that she must read his hypocrisy and the baseness of his motives in his countenance.
But hers was a most innocent and unsuspicious nature, apt to believe others as true and honest as herself. She went on presently. "It is so beautifully simple and easy,—God's way of saving us poor sinners: it is its very simplicity that so stumbles wise men and women, while little children, in their sweet trustfulness, just taking God at His word, understand it without any difficulty." She spoke in a musing tone, not looking at Egerton at all, but with her eyes fixed meditatingly upon the floor.