"A guilty conscience, it is said, needs no accuser. The likeness to me was so strong, that I really thought the picture was sketched from myself as the original. Ah, me!"
"Had you not better call on Mr. C—?" asked Harrison.
"No, no. See him for me, if you please, and tell him that I am convinced of my error in supposing he pointed me out in the congregation. As to the particular allusion that I felt to be offensive, I hope you will still keep your own counsel. I did wrong, under temptation, and have suffered and repented in consequence. It can do no good to bring the matter to light now."
"None at all. I will not speak of it."
Nor did he. Many and various were the suggestions and suppositions of the congregation touching the nature of the preacher's personal allusion to the jeweller, and some dozen of little gossiping stories got into circulation; but the truth did not find its way to the light. And not until the day on which he was leaving the station for a new field of labour, did the preacher himself understand the matter; and then he had it from Mr. Grant's own lips.
FOR THE FUN OF IT.
"JUST look at them young lovers," said Harry Mears, glancing from his companion to a young man and maiden, who, for the moment unconscious that they were in the midst of a large company, were leaning towards each other, and looking into each other's faces in rather a remarkable manner. "Isn't it ridiculous? I thought Fisher had more sense than to do so. As to Clara Grant, she always was a little weak."
The friend looked at the couple an smiled. "It is ridiculous, certainly," he remarked. "Why havn't they sense enough to keep these little love-passages for private occasions?"
"Clara, with all her silliness used to be a right pleasant companion," said Mears. "But since this love affair between her and Fisher, she has become intolerably dull and uninteresting. She doesn't care a fig for anybody but him, and really appears to think it a task to be even polite to an old acquaintance. I don't think she has cause to be quite so elated with her conquest as this comes to; nor to feel that, in possessing the love of a man like Fisher, she is independent of the world, and may show off the indifference she feels to every one. Fisher is clever enough, but he is neither a Socrates nor a saint."