Not long afterwards Mrs. Jervois wrote and told us she had entered the
Catholic Church. "I had, in fact, been received before I went to you,"
she confessed.

"There!" Ideala exclaimed. "It is just what I said. A want of common
honesty is a part of the religion; and you see she had begun to
practise it while she was here."

"What an eternal lie it is they preach when they tell us life is not
worth having," she said to me once, speaking of preachers generally. "I
have heard an oleosaccharine priest preach for an hour on this subject,
detailing the worthlessness of all earthly pleasures, with which he
seemed to be intimately acquainted--his appearance making one suspect
that he had not even yet exhausted them all himself--and giving a
florid account of the glories of the life to come, about which he
appeared to know as much but to care less; just as if heaven might not
begin on earth if only men would let it."

One day I had to warn her about acting so often on impulse. She heard
what I had to say very good-naturedly, and, after thinking about it for
a while, she said: "What a pity it is one never sees an impulse coming.
It is impossible to know whether they arise from below, or descend from
above. I always find if I act on one that it has arisen; and as surely
if I leave it alone it proves to have been a good opportunity lost. And
how curiously our thoughts go on, often so irrespective of ourselves. I
was in a Roman Catholic church the other day, and the priest--a friend
of mine, who looks like the last of the Mohicans minus the feathers in
his hair; but a good man, with nice, soft, velvety brown eyes--preached
most impressively. He told us that the Lord was there--there on that