Phyllis of Philistia | Page 5

of a better family.)
Why should she begin to ask herself if she really loved George Holland;
if the feeling she had for him should be called by the name of love, or
by some other name that did not mean just the same thing? Of course
she had thought a good deal--though her father did not know it--of love.
She had seen upon other people the effect of the possession of this gift
of love, how it had caused them to forget pain and poverty, and shame,
and infamy, and God, and death, and hell. Ah! that was love--that was
love! and she had hoped that one day such a gift of love would be given
to her; for it was surely the thing that was best worth having in the
world! Once or twice she had fancied that it was at the point of being
given to her. There had been certain thrilling passages between herself
and two men,--an interval of a year between each,--and there had also

been a kiss in an alcove designed by her dearest friend, Ella Linton, for
the undoing of mankind, a place of softened lights and shadowy palms.
It was her recollection of these incidents that had caused her to fumble
with the blind cord when her father had been suggesting to her the
disadvantages of inexperience in matters of the heart. But the incidents
had led to nothing, except, perhaps, a week or two of remorse. But she
could not help feeling, when that month of curious doubt was upon her,
that the little thrill which she had felt when one man had put his arm
around her for an instant, when another man--he was very young--had
put his lips upon her mouth--it was a straightforward kiss--suggested a
nearer approach to love than she had yet been conscious of in the
presence of George Holland. (He had never done more than kiss her
hand. Is it on record that any man did more when dressed with the
severity of the cleric?)
This was a terrible impression for a young woman to retain before her
engagement to a man has passed into its third month. Then she began to
wonder if all her previous ideas--all her previous aspirations--were
mistaken. She began to wonder if this was the reality of love--this
conviction that there was nothing in the whole world that she would
welcome with more enthusiasm than an announcement on the part of
her father that he was going on a voyage to Australia, and that he meant
to take her with him.
And then----
Well, then she threw herself upon her bed and wept for an hour one
evening, and for two hours (at intervals) another evening; and then
looked up the old published speeches made by a certain cabinet
minister in his irresponsible days, on a question which he had recently
introduced. Her father was bitterly opposed to the most recent views of
the minister, and was particularly anxious to confront him with his own
phrases of thirty years back. She spent four hours copying out the
words which were now meant by Mr. Ayrton to confound the utterer.
CHAPTER III.

THE BISHOP KNEW SOMETHING OF MAN, AND HE KNEW
SOMETHING OF THE CHURCH; HE EVEN KNEW SOMETHING
OF THE BIBLE.
Her father when he came in commended her diligence. He read over
those damning extracts, punctuating them with chuckles; he would
make an example of that minister who had found it convenient to adopt
a course diametrically opposed to the principle involved in his early
speeches. He chuckled, reading the extracts while he paced the room,
drawing upon his stock of telling phrases, which were calculated to turn
the derision of the whole House of Commons upon his opponent.
Thus, being very well satisfied with himself, he was satisfied with her,
and kissed her, with a sigh.
"What a treasure you are to me, dearest one!" he said. There was a
pause before he added, in a contemplative tone:
"I suppose a clergyman has no need ever to hunt up the past
deliverances of another clergyman in order to confound him out of his
own mouth. Ah, no; I should fancy not."
Regret was in his voice. He seemed to suggest to her that he believed
her powers would be wasted as the wife of a man who, of course, being
a clergyman, could have no enemies.
"Dearest papa!" she cried, throwing herself into his arms, and sobbing
on his shirt front, "dearest papa, I will not leave you. I don't want to be
anyone's wife. I want to be your daughter--only to be your daughter."
He comforted her with kisses and soothing smoothings of the hair. No,
no, he said; he would not be selfish. He would remember that a