against her bonnet-strings.  What did she think in those sacred moments?  Let us not profane her worship with too minute inquiry.  Whatever she thought, those emotions were perfectly valid.  She might be snappish, limited, and say ugly things during half the week, but there was something underneath all that which was in communication with the skies.  The church was the only mental or spiritual education which Miss Tippit received.  Books she never read—­she had not time; and if she tried to read one she was instantly seized with a curious fidgetiness—­directly she sat down with a volume in her hand it was just as if things went all awry, and compelled her instantly to rise and adjust them.  In church all this fidgetiness vanished, and no household cares intruded.  It was strange, considering her temper, and how people generally carry their secular world with them wherever they go, but so it was.  There was a secret in her history, her friends said, for though they knew nothing of her little bit of private religion, and although she never admitted a soul into the little oratory where the image of her Saviour hung, everybody was aware that there was “a something about her” which took her out of the class to which she externally and by much of her ordinary conduct appeared to belong, and of course the theory was an early love disappointment, the only theory which the average human intellect is capable of forming in such cases.  It was utterly baseless; and Miss Tippit was touched with this faint touch of supernal grace just because her Maker had so decreed.

Miriam disliked Miss Tippit on account of her primness and old maidishness, and the frequent hints which she gave to keep her room in order.  Miriam had picked up an epithet, perhaps from her aunt, perhaps from a book which seemed exactly to describe Miss Tippit—­she was “conventional;” and having acquired this epithet, her antipathy to Miss Tippit increased every time she used it.  It was really not coin of the realm, but gilded brass—­a forgery; and the language is full of such forgeries, which we continually circulate, and worst of all, pass off upon ourselves.  Thus it happened that although Miss Tippit would have been glad to do Miriam many a service, her offers were treated with, something like disdain, and were instantly withdrawn.  The only other lodgers in the house were an old gentleman and his wife on the first floor, whom Miriam never saw, and about whom she knew nothing.

Andrew at last began to feel the wear of London life.  When he came home in the evening he suffered from an exhaustion which he never felt in Cowfold.  It was not that weariness of the muscles which was a pleasure after a game at cricket or football, but a nervous distress which craved a stimulant.  He had confined himself hitherto to a single glass of beer at supper, but this was not enough, and a glass of whisky and water afterwards was added to keep company with the pipe.  By degrees also he dropped into