As for Petrina herself, who was in Boston more than of it, she is
so admirably analyzed in the chapter devoted to the task that I
am tempted to instance it as the best piece of work in the book,
though it does not make one hold one's breath like some of the
dramatic episodes: "Whatever religious instinct had been in the
family had spent itself at least two generations before her time.
She was a pagan--a tolerant, indifferent, slightly scornful
pagan.... But she was none the less a Puritan. Certain of her
ways of thought and habits of life, had survived the beliefs
which had given them birth, as an effect will often outlive its
cause. If she was a pagan, she was a serious one, a pagan with a
New England conscience."

This is mighty well said, and the like things that are said of
Petrina's sister-in-law, who has married an English title, are
mighty well, too. "She had inherited a countenance whose
expression was like the light which lingers in the sky long after
sunset--the light of some ancestral fire gone out. If in her
face there were prayers, they had been said by Pepperells and
Vassalls now sleeping in Massachusetts churchyards. If in her
voice there were tears, they had been shed by those who would
weep no more. She mirrored the emotions she had never felt; and
all that was left of joys and sorrows and spiritual aspirations
which had once thrilled human hearts was in that plaintive echo
they had given to this woman's tone, and the light of petition
they had left burning in her eyes."

No one who reads such passages can deny that the author of "Let
Not Man Put Asunder" can think subtly as well as say clearly, and
the book abounds in proofs of his ability to portray human nature