The Doctor patiently smoothed back and rearranged, while opposite to him sat Mary, bending over some copying she was doing for him. One stray sunbeam fell on her light brown hair, tinging it to gold; her long, drooping lashes lay over the wax-like pink of her cheeks, as she wrote on.
"Mary," said the Doctor, pushing the papers from him.
"Sir," she answered, looking up, the blood just perceptibly rising in her cheeks.
"Do you ever have any periods in which your evidences seem not altogether clear?"
Nothing could show more forcibly the grave, earnest character of thought in New England at this time than the fact that this use of the term "evidences" had become universally significant and understood as relating to one's right of citizenship in a celestial, invisible commonwealth.
So Mary understood it, and it was with a deepening flush she answered gently, "No, Sir."
"What! never any doubts?" said the Doctor.
"I am sorry," said Mary, apologetically; "but I do not see how I _can_ have; I never could."
"Ah!" said the Doctor, musingly, "would I could say so! There are times, indeed, when I hope I have an interest in the precious Redeemer, and behold an infinite loveliness and beauty in Him, apart from anything I expect or hope. But even then how deceitful is the human heart! how insensibly might a mere selfish love take the place of that disinterested complacency which regards Him for what He is in Himself, apart from what He is to us! Say, my dear friend, does not this thought sometimes make you tremble?"
Poor Mary was truth itself, and this question distressed her; she must answer the truth. The fact was, that it had never come into her blessed little heart to tremble, for she was one of those children of the bride-chamber who cannot mourn, because the bridegroom is ever with them; but then, when she saw the man for whom her reverence was almost like that for her God thus distrustful, thus lowly, she could not but feel that her too calm repose might, after all, be the shallow, treacherous calm of an ignorant, ill-grounded spirit, and therefore, with a deep blush and a faltering voice, she said,--
"Indeed, I am afraid something must be wrong with me. I _cannot_ have any fears,--I never could; I try sometimes, but the thought of God's goodness comes all around me, and I am so happy before I think of it!"