palace, had sent to see him; and, while granting the force of his
scruples, had yet said, "Mine is the main responsibility. But if you ask
me to ordain you, I will do so without hesitation; for if the Church
wants preachers, it also wants deep scholars and virtuous pastors."
Fresh from this interview, George Morley came to announce to Lady
Montfort that his resolve was unshaken. She, I have said, paused long
before she answered. "George," she began at last, in a voice so
touchingly sweet that its very sound was balm to a wounded spirit, "I
must not argue with you: I bow before the grandeur of your motives, and I
will not say that you are not right. One thing I do feel, that if you
thus sacrifice your inclinations and interests from scruples so pure and
holy, you will never be to be pitied; you will never know regret. Poor
or rich, single or wedded, a soul that so seeks to reflect heaven will be
serene and blessed." Thus she continued to address him for some time, he
all the while inexpressibly soothed and comforted; then gradually she
insinuated hopes even of a worldly and temporal kind,--literature was
left to him,--the scholar's pen, if not the preacher's voice. In
literature he might make a career that would lead on to fortune. There
were places also in the public service to which a defect in speech was no
obstacle. She knew his secret, modest attachment; she alluded to it just
enough to encourage constancy and rebuke despair. As she ceased, his
admiring and grateful consciousness of his cousin's rare qualities
changed the tide of his emotions towards her from himself, and he
exclaimed with an earnestness that almost wholly subdued his stutter,

"What a counsellor you are! what a soother! If Montfort were but less
prosperous or more ambitious, what a treasure, either to console or to
sustain, in a mind like yours!"

As those words were said, you might have seen at once why Lady Montfort