and invitation.

Held In the arms of her father, when a babe, she had been duly
christened. His death had occurred soon afterwards, then her
mother's. Under the nurture of a grandmother to whom religion was
a convenience and social form, she had received the strictest
ceremonial but in no wise any spiritual training. The first
conscious awakening of this beautiful unearthly sense had not taken
place until the night of her confirmation--a wet April evening when
the early green of the earth was bowed to the ground, and the
lilies-of-the-valley in the yard had chilled her fingers as she had
plucked them (chosen flower of her consecration); she and they but
rising alike into their higher lives out of the same mysterious
Mother.

That night she had knelt among the others at the chancel and the
bishop who had been a friend of her father's, having approached her
in the long line of young and old, had laid his hands the more
softly for his memories upon her brow with the impersonal prayer:

"_Defend, O Lord, this thy child with thy heavenly grace, that she
may continue thine forever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit
more and more, until she come unto thy Everlasting Kingdom_."

For days afterwards a steady radiance seemed to Isabel to rest upon
her wherever she went, shed straight from Eternity. She had
avoided her grandmother, secluded herself from the closest
companions, been very thoughtful.

Years had elapsed since. But no experience of the soul is ever