So he used to argue, with three-fourths of mankind, mingling truth and falsehood: and would, on these grounds, have done his best to turn the dissenting preacher out of that house, had he found him in it.

But to-day he was in a more lenient, perhaps in a more human, and therefore more spiritual mood.

It was all very well for him, full of life, and power, and hope, to look on death in that cold, careless way; but for that poor young thing, cut off just as life opened from all that made life lovely--was not death for her a painful, ugly anomaly?
Could she be blamed, if she shuddered at going forth into the unknown blank, she knew not whither?
All very well for the old emperor of Rome, who had lived his life and done his work, to play with the dreary question-- "Animula, vagula, blandula, Hospes comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca, Rigidula, nudula, pallida?
--" But she, who had lived no life, and done no work--only had pined through weary years of hideous suffering; crippled and ulcerated with scrofula, now dying of consumption: was it not a merciful dream, a beautiful dream, a just dream--so beautiful and just, that perhaps it might be true,--that in some fairer world, all this, and more, might be made up to her?
If not, was it not a mistake and an injustice, that she should ever have come into the world at all?
And was not Grace doing a rational as well as a loving work, in telling her, under whatsoever symbols, that such a home of rest and beauty awaited her?
It was not the sort of place to which he expected, perhaps even wished, to go: but it fitted well enough with a young girl's hopes, a young girl's powers of enjoyment.

Let it be; perhaps there was such a place,--why not ?--fitted for St.Dorothea, and those cut off in youth like her; and other places fit for such as he.

And he spoke more tenderly than usual (though he was never untender), as he said,-- "And you feel better to-day?
I am sure you must, with such a kind friend, to tell you such sweet tales." "I do not feel better, thank you.