He reminded her of the long months she had spent at Warpington with its peculiar spiritual opportunities; that he should be to blame if he did not press upon her the first importance of the religious life, the ever-present love of God, and the means of approaching Him through the sacraments.

He entreated her to join her prayers with his that she might be saved from the worship of her own talent, which had shut out the worship of God, from this dreadful indifference to holy things, and the impatience of all religious teaching which he grieved to see in her.
He spoke well, the earnest, blind, would-be leader endeavoring to guide her to the ditch from which he knew not how she had emerged, passionately distressed at the opposition he met with as he would have drawn her lovingly towards it.
The tears were in Hester's eyes, but the eyes themselves were as flint seen through water.

She stifled many fierce and cruel impulses to speak as plainly as he did, to tell him that it was not religion that was abhorent to her, but the form in which he presented it to her, and that the sin against the Holy Ghost was disbelief, like his, in the religion of others.

But when have such words availed anything?
When have they been believed?
Hester had a sharp tongue, and she was slowly learning to beware of it as her worst enemy.

She laid down many weapons before she trusted herself to speak.
"It is good of you to care what becomes of me," she said, gently, but her voice was cold.