people like Colenso, who questioned the infallibility of the Bible, but I remembered how the Apostle John had fled from the Baths when Cerinthus entered them, lest the roof should fall on the heretic, and crush any one in his neighbourhood, and I looked on all heretics with holy horror.  Pusey had indoctrinated me with his stern hatred of all heresy, and I was content to rest with him on that faith, “which must be old because it is eternal, and must be unchangeable because it is true.”  I would not even read the works of my mothers favourite Stanley, because he was “unsound,” and because Pusey had condemned his “variegated use of words which destroys all definiteness of meaning”—­a clever and pointed description, be it said in passing, of the Dean’s exquisite phrases, capable of so many readings.  It can then be imagined with what a stab of pain this first doubt struck me, and with what haste I smothered it up, buried it, and smoothed the turf over its grave. But it had been there, and it left its mark.

CHAPTER IV.

MARRIAGE.

The last year of my girlish freedom was drawing to its close; how shall I hope to make commonsense readers understand how I became betrothed maiden ere yet nineteen, girl-wife when twenty years had struck?  Looking back over twenty-five years, I feel a profound pity for the girl standing at that critical point of life, so utterly, hopelessly ignorant of all that marriage meant, so filled with impossible dreams, so unfitted for the role of wife.  As I have said, my day-dreams held little place for love, partly from the absence of love novels from my reading, partly from the mystic fancies that twined themselves round the figure of the Christ.  Catholic books of devotion—­English or Roman, it matters not, for to a large extent they are translations of the same hymns and prayers—­are exceedingly glowing in their language, and the dawning feelings of womanhood unconsciously lend to them a passionate fervour.  I longed to spend my time in worshipping Jesus, and was, as far as my inner life was concerned, absorbed in that passionate love of “the Saviour” which, among emotional Catholics, really is the human passion of love transferred to an ideal—­for women to Jesus, for men to the Virgin Mary.  In order to show that I am not here exaggerating, I subjoin a few of the prayers in which I found daily delight, and I do this in order to show how an emotional girl may be attracted by these so-called devotional exercises:—­

“O crucified Love, raise in me fresh ardours of love and consolation, that it may henceforth be the greatest torment I can endure ever to offend Thee; that it may be my greatest delight to please Thee.”

“Let the remembrance of Thy death, O Lord Jesu, make me to desire and pant after Thee, that I may delight in Thy gracious presence.”

“O most sweet Jesu Christ, I, unworthy sinner, yet redeemed by Thy precious blood....  Thine I am and will be, in life and in death.”