Elsie, usually full of innocent mirth and gladness, was very quiet at dinner that day, and Aunt Wealthy, watching her furtively, thought she noticed an unwonted shade of sadness on the fair face.
"What is it, dear?" she asked at length; "something seems to have gone wrong with you."
The young girl replied by repeating the substance of the morning's talk with Mr. Egerton, and expressing her disappointment at the discovery that he was not the Christian man she had taken him to be.
"Perhaps what you have taken in earnest, was but spoken in jest, my child," said Miss Stanhope.
"Ah, auntie, but a Christian surely could not say such things even in jest," she answered, with a little sigh, and a look of sorrowful concern on her face.
Half an hour later, Elsie sat reading in the abode of the vine-covered porch, while her aunt enjoyed her customary after-dinner nap. She presently heard the gate swing to, and the next moment Mr. Egerton was helping himself to a seat by her side.
"I hope I don't intrude, Miss Dinsmore," he began, assuming a slightly embarrassed air.
"Oh, no, not at all," she answered, closing her book; "but aunt is lying down, and--"
"Ah, no matter; I wouldn't have her disturbed for the world; and in fact I am rather glad of the opportunity of seeing you alone. I--I have been thinking a good deal of that talk we had this morning, and--I am really quite shocked at the sentiments I then expressed, though they were spoken more than half in jest. Miss Dinsmore, I am not a Christian, but--but I want to be, and would, if I only knew how; and I've come to you to learn the way; for somehow I seem to feel that you could make the thing plainer to me than any one else. What must I do first?"
Glad tears shone in the soft eyes she lifted to his face as she answered, "'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.' Believe, 'only believe.'"
"'Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.'"
The man was an arrant knave and hypocrite, simulating anxiety about his soul's salvation only for the purpose of ingratiating himself with Elsie; but "the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God," pricked him for the moment, as she wielded it in faith and prayer. What ways, what thoughts were his! Truly they had need to be forsaken if he would hope ever to see that holy city of which we are told "There shall in no wise enter it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie."