was it to keep in view that sole criterion in estimating the novel impressions she received.  To review the criterion itself was still beyond her power.  She suffered from the conviction that trials foreseen were proving too strong for her.  Whenever her youth yielded to the allurement of natural joys, there followed misery of penitence.  Not that Miriam did in truth deem it a sin to enjoy the sunshine and the breath of the sea and the beauty of mountains (though such delights might become excessive, like any other, and so veil temptation), but she felt that for one in her position of peril there could not be too strict a watch kept upon the pleasures that were admitted.  Hence she could never forget herself in pleasure; her attitude must always be that of one on guard.

The name of Italy signified perilous enticement, and she was beginning to feel it.  The people amid whom she lived were all but avowed scorners of her belief, and yet she was beginning to like their society.  Every letter she wrote to Bartles seemed to her despatched on a longer journey than the one before; her paramount interests were fading, fading; she could not exert herself to think of a thousand matters which used to have the power to keep her active all day long.  The chapel-plans were hidden away; she durst not go to the place where they would have met her eye.

She suffered in her pride.  On landing at Naples, she had imagined that her position among the Spences and their friends would not be greatly different from that she had held at Bartles.  They were not “religious” people; all the more must they respect her, feeling rebuked in her presence.  The chapel project would enhance her importance.  How far otherwise had it proved!  They pitied her, compassionated her lack of knowledge, of opportunities.  With the perception of this, there came upon her another disillusion In classing the Spences with people who were not “religious,” she had understood them as lax in the observance of duties which at all events they recognized as such.  By degrees she learnt that they were very far from holding the same views as herself concerning religious obligation; they were anything but conscience-smitten in the face of her example.  Was it, then, possible that persons who lived in a seemly manner could be sceptics, perhaps “infidels”?  What of Cecily Doran?  She had not dared to ask Cecily face to face how far her disbelief went; the girl seemed to have no creed but that of worldly delight.  How had she killed her conscience in so short a time?  Obviously, her views were those of Mrs. Lessingham; probably those of Mr. Mallard.  Were these people strange and dreadful exceptions, or did they represent a whole world of which she had not suspected the existence?