Any meaning but that which the church of her fathers gave to a passage must be of the devil, and every man opposed to the truth who saw in that meaning anything but truth! It was indeed impossible Miss Carmichael should see any meaning but that, even if she had looked for it; she was nowise qualified for discovering truth, not being herself true.

What she saw and loved in the doctrines of her church was not the truth, but the assertion; and whoever questioned, not to say the doctrine, but even the proving of it by any particular passage, was a dangerous person, and unsound.

All the time her acceptance and defence of any doctrine made not the slightest difference to her life--as indeed how should it?
Such was the only friend lady Arctura had.

But the conscience and heart of the younger woman were alive to a degree that boded ill either for the doctrine that stinted their growth, or the nature unable to cast it off.

Miss Carmichael was a woman about six-and-twenty--and had been a woman, like too many Scotch girls, long before she was out of her teens--a human flower cut and dried--an unpleasant specimen, and by no means valuable from its scarcity.