before. And to-day, insensible as he was to the repulsiveness of the
forms of worship of his confession he felt as though the bread and wine
--the Flesh and Blood of the Saviour--had sealed the bond he had silently
entered into with himself; as though the Lord had put forth an invisible
hand to remove the guilt and the curse that crushed him so sorely. Deep
devotion fell on his soul: his future life, he thought, should bring him
nearer to God than ever before, and be spent in loving, and in the more
earnest, full, and laborious exercise of the gifts Heaven had bestowed on
him.




CHAPTER III.

Orion had dreaded the drive home with his mother, but after complaining
to him of Susannah's conduct in having made a startling display of her
vexation in the women's place behind the screen, she had leaned on him
and fallen fast asleep. Her head was on her son's shoulder when they
reached home, and Orion's anxiety for the mother he truly loved was
enhanced when he found it difficult to rouse her. He felt her stagger
like a drunken creature, and he led her not into the fountain-room but to
her bed-chamber, where she only begged to lie down; and hardly had she
done so when she was again overcome by sleep.

Orion now made his way to Gamaliel the jeweller, to purchase from him a
very large and costly diamond, plainly set, and the Israelite's brother
undertook to deliver it to the fair widow at Constantinople, who was
known to him as one of his customers. Orion, in the jeweller's sitting-
room, wrote a letter to his former mistress, in which he begged her in