“Surely,” said Cecil, “there is no connection between piety and cutting out.”

“I don’t know,” said Anne; “but it does not seem to me to be right to go on with a work where my Master’s Name is forbidden.”

“Religion ought never to be obtruded,” said Cecil.

“The Word ought to flavour everything, in season or out of season,” said Anne, thoughtfully.

“Oh! that’s impossible.  It’s your narrow view.  If you thrust preaching into everything, we can never work together.”

“Oh, then,” said Anne, quickly, “I must give it up!” And she turned away with a rapid step, to carry her texts back to her room.

“Anne!” called Cecil, “I did not mean that!”

Anne paused for a moment, looked over the baluster, and repeated firmly, “No, Cecil; it would be denying Christ to work where His Name is forbidden.”

Perhaps there was something in the elevation and the carved rail that gave the idea of a pulpit, for Cecil felt as if she was being preached at, and turned her back, indignant and vexed at what she had by no means intended to incur—­the loss of such a useful assistant as she found in Anne.

“Such nonsense!” she said to herself, as she crossed the hall alone, there meeting with Rosamond, equipped for the village.  “Is not Anne going to-day?” she said, as she saw the pony-carriage at the door.

“No.  It is so vexatious.  She is so determined upon preaching to the women, that I have been obliged to put a stop to it.”

“Indeed!  I should not have thought it of poor Anne; but no one can tell what those semi-dissenters think right.”

“When she declared she ought to do it in season or out of season, what was one to do?” said Cecil.

“I thought that was for clergymen,” said Rosamond, hitting the right nail on the head in her ignorance, as so often happened.

“She sees no difference,” said Cecil.  “Shall I drive you down?” she added graciously, according to the fashion of uniting with one sister-in-law against the other; and Rosamond not only accepted, but asked to be taken on to Willansborough, to buy a birthday present for her brother Terry, get stamps for an Indian letter, and perform a dozen more commissions that seemed to arise in her mind with the opportunity.  Her two brothers were to spend the Christmas holidays with her, and she was in high spirits, and so communicative about them that she hardly observed how little interest Cecil took in Terry’s achievements.

“Who is that,” she presently asked, “with those red-haired children?  It looked like Miss Vivian’s figure.”

“I believe it was.  Julius and I often see her walking about the lanes; but she passes like—­like a fire-flaught, whatever that is—­ just bows, and hardly ever speaks.”

“She is a strange girl,” said Cecil.  “Lady Tyrrell says she cannot draw her into any of her interests, but she will go her own way.”