the past, could not--it seemed--be known by a pure woman! And she would
glance from the books to the engraving of her grandfather above them,--to
the stern and yet delicate face of the old Calvinist, with its high-peaked
brow, and white neckcloth supporting the sharp chin; lifting her heart
to him in a passionate endorsement, a common fierce hatred of wrong and
tyranny.

She had grown older since then, and her country with her. New England
Puritanism was no longer what it had been; and the Catholic Church had
spread in the land. But in Uncle Ben's quiet household, and in her own
feeling, the changes had been but slight and subtle. Pity, perhaps, had
insensibly taken the place of hatred. But those old words 'priest' and
'mass' still rung in her ears as symbols of all that man had devised to
corrupt and deface the purity of Christ.

And of what that purity might be, she had such tender, such positive
traditions! Her mother had been a Christian mystic--a 'sweet woman,' meek
as a dove in household life, yet capable of the fiercest ardours as a
preacher and missionary, gathering rough labourers into barns and by the
wayside, and dying before her time, worn out by the imperious energies of
religion. Lucy had always before her the eyes that seemed to be shining
through a mist, the large tremulous mouth, the gently furrowed brow. Those
strange forces--'grace'--and 'the spirit'--had been the realities, the
deciding powers of her childhood, whether in what concerned the great
emotions of faith, or the most trivial incidents of ordinary life--writing
a letter--inviting a guest--taking a journey. The soul bare before God,
depending on no fleshly aid, distracted by no outward rite; sternly
defending its own freedom as a divine trust:--she had been reared on these
main thoughts of Puritanism, and they were still through all insensible
transformation, the guiding forces of her own being.