Then the hand on his arm trembled violently; and while he was thinking how he should quiet her tremor, and chiding himself for having been so abrupt, Dorothy made answer with a burst of tears,—
"O Lewis, I never wished anything so much in my life! Will you show me how?"
"Did you know how Dorothy felt?" Lewis said, beginning the moment the door of their room closed on himself and wife. There was a new look on his face, an eager, almost an exalted look, and a ring in his voice that made Louise turn and regard him half curiously as she said,—
"Nothing beyond the fact that she has seemed to me very impressible for a day or two, and that I have had strong faith in praying for her. Why?"
"Why, Louise, she melted right down at the first word. She is very deeply impressed, and wonderfully in earnest; and I half believe she is a Christian' at this moment. I found her in bewilderment as to just what conversion meant, but she grasped at my explanation like one who saw with the eyes of her soul. I was so surprised and humiliated and grateful!"
All these phases of emotion showed in his prayer. Louise, who had believed him much in earnest for years, had never heard him pray as he did that evening for his sister Dorothy. As she listened and joined in the petitions, her faith, too, grew strong to grasp the thought that there was a new name written in heaven that night and rejoiced over among the angels. And yet her heart was sad. In vain she chid it for ungratefulness, and dimly suspected selfish motives at the bottom. But it did seem so strange to her that John, for whom she had felt such a constantly increasing anxiety, for whom she had prayed as she could not pray even for Dorothy, held aloof, and was even farther away to-night than she had felt him to be before; and Dorothy, at a word from the brother who had hardly given her two connected thoughts for years, had come joyfully into the kingdom!
Was Louise jealous? She would have been shocked at the thought; and yet, in what strange and subtle ways the tempter can lend us unawares, even when we believe ourselves to be almost in a line with Christ.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
BIRDS OF PROMISE.
"ONE moment, Mr. Butler," said Louise, detaining the minister, as, having given her cordial greeting in the church-aisle, and bowed to Dorothy, and shaken hands with Father Morgan, he was turning away; "we have something to tell you, something that will make you glad; our sister Dorrie has decided for Christ."