Religious hypocrisy is in our day a very rare thing; so little is to be gained by it.  To be sure, the vast majority of English people are constantly guilty of hypocritical practices, but that, as a rule, is mere testimony to the rootedness of their orthodox faith.  Mr. Elgar. shutting himself up between breakfast and chapel to write business letters—­which he pre- or post-dated—­was ignoble enough, but not therefore a hypocrite.  Had a fatal accident happened to one of his family whilst he was thus employed, he would not have succeeded in persuading his conscience that the sin and the calamity were unconnected.  His wife had never admitted a doubt of its being required by the immutable law of God that she should be sad and severe on Sunday, that Reuben should be sternly punished for whistling on that day, that little Miriam should be rewarded when she went through the long services with unnatural stillness and demureness.  Nor was Miriam herself a hypocrite when, mistress of Redbeck House, she began to establish her reputation and authority throughout dissenting Bartles.

Her instruction had been rigidly sectarian.  Whatever she studied was represented to her from the point of view of its relation to Christianity as her teachers understood it.  The Christian faith was alone of absolute significance; all else that the mind of man could contain was of more or less importance as more or less connected with that single interest.  To the time of her marriage, her outlook upon the world was incredibly restricted.  She had never read a book that would not pass her mother’s censorship; she had never seen a work of art; she had never heard any but “sacred” music; she had never perused a journal; she had never been to an entertainment—­ unless the name could be given to a magic-lantern exhibition of views in Palestine, or the like.  Those with whom she associated had gone through a similar training, and knew as little of life.

She had heard of “infidelity;” yes.  Live as long as she might, she would never forget one dreadful day when, in a quarrel with his mother, Reuben uttered words which signified hatred and rejection of all he had been taught to hold divine Mrs. Elgar’s pallid, speechless horror; the severe chastisement inflicted on the lad by his father;—­she could never look back on it all without sickness of heart.  Thenceforth, her brother and his wild ways embodied for her that awful thing, infidelity.  At the age which Cecily Doran had now attained, Miriam believed that there were only a few men living so unspeakably wicked as to repudiate Christianity; one or two of these, she had learnt from the pulpit, were “men of science,” a term which to this day fell on her ears with sinister sound.