“All higher knowledge in her presence falls
  Degraded; wisdom, in discourse with her,
  Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows.”

Something like this effect was always produced on John’s mind when he tried to settle questions relating to his higher nature with Lillie.  He seemed, somehow, always to get the worst of it.  All her womanly graces and fascinations, so powerful over his senses and imagination, arrayed themselves formidably against him, and for the time seemed to strike him dumb.  What he believed, and believed with enthusiasm, when he was alone, or with Grace, seemed to drizzle away, and be belittled, when he undertook to convince her of it.  Lest John should be called a muff and a spoon for this peculiarity, we cite once more the high authority aforesaid, where Milton makes poor Adam tell the angel,—­

   “Yet when I approach
  Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
  And in herself complete, so well to know
  Her own, that what she wills to do or say
  Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.”

John went out from Lillie’s presence rather humbled and over-crowed.  When the woman that a man loves laughs at his moral enthusiasms, it is like a black frost on the delicate tips of budding trees.  It is up-hill work, as we all know, to battle with indolence and selfishness, and self-seeking and hard-hearted worldliness.  Then the highest and holiest part of our nature has a bashfulness of its own.  It is a heavenly stranger, and easily shamed.  A nimble-tongued, skilful woman can so easily show the ridiculous side of what seemed heroism; and what is called common-sense, so generally, is only some neatly put phase of selfishness.  Poor John needed the angel at his elbow, to give him the caution which he is represented as giving to Father Adam:—­

   “What transports thee so? 
  An outside?—­fair, no doubt, and worthy well
  Thy cherishing, thy honor, and thy love,
  Not thy subjection.  Weigh her with thyself,
  Then value.  Oft-times nothing profits more
  Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
  Well managed:  of that skill the more them knowest,
  The more she will acknowledge thee her head,
  And to realities yield all her shows.”

But John had no angel at his elbow.  He was a fellow with a great heart,—­good as gold,—­with upward aspirations, but with slow speech; and, when not sympathized with, he became confused and incoherent, and even dumb.  So his only way with his little pink and white empress was immediate and precipitate flight.

Lillie ran to the window when he was gone, and saw him and Grace get into the carriage together; and then she saw them drive to the old Ferguson House, and Rose Ferguson came out and got in with them.  “Well,” she said to herself, “he shan’t do that many times more,—­I’m resolved.”