Late wisdom is apt to taste of the flower of folly whence it is distilled. So, at least, thought Mrs. Bergan, when, months afterward, she looked back upon her dinner-party, and seemed to see in it the beginning of trouble. But it is probable that nothing which she could have done, or left undone, would have availed to alter the natural, irresistible course of events. At the most, she may have hastened its current a little. Her dinner-party only furnished a convenient point of meeting for lives inevitably tending toward each other, for influences long converging, and certain to meet at last, in clash or harmony. Without it, there must needs have been a swift birth of friendship between Carice and Astra, at their next meeting; which meeting could not have been much longer deferred. Without it, Doctor Remy would assiduously have spun his web for self-advantage, fastening his threads indifferently to whatever or whomsoever seemed to promise the best support, and quickly unfastening them whenever a prop failed him. Without it, the hearts of Bergan and Carice would sooner or later have inclined toward each other, by reason of an instinct truer and surer than maternal foresight or forestalling.

The dinner was, per se, a success. The table was elegant with glass, silver, and flowers; the viands were the creation of one of those round, greasy Africanesses, who are born to the gridiron not less indubitably than a poet to the lyre; and white-haired old Sancho waited with a blending of obsequiousness and pomposity, wonderful to behold. There were neither culinary failures to harrow the soul of the hostess, nor glass-fractures or sauce-spillings to disconcert her guests.

The conversation was bright, easy, and desultory, as well as interlocutory and general by turns, as dinner-table talk should be. Only once, and that quite at the last, did it take a graver turn than was well suited to the occasion, or seem to stir any ill-feeling. In a pause of the more general conversation, Doctor Remy was heard saying to Carice, who sat next him;—

"You are fortunate in being able to believe so implicitly, without ampler proof."

"Do you think the proof insufficient, then?" asked Carice, with a little look of wonder in her blue eyes.

"To some minds," answered Doctor Remy, evasively.

"Perhaps," interposed Mr. Islay, whose ears had been open for some moments toward this conversation,—"perhaps such minds find the proof insufficient only because they have not yet been able to look at it in the right light."

"What light do you mean?" asked Doctor Remy, a little doubtfully.

"The light of a renewed heart and an obedient life. No man apprehends the truths of Christianity clearly, nor believes them with a belief that is worth anything, until he feels his own personal need of them. When that time comes, he catches hold of them, without proof, as it were,—or, at least, without other proof than their felt adaptation to that intense need,—-just as a man who is hungry and thirsty accepts convenient food without troubling himself about its chemical analysis. Then, holding them fast, and feeling how perfectly they meet his wants, what strength and satisfaction they give to his mind, and what symmetry and dignity they impart to his life, he begins to look back over the long line of prophecy and testimony for proof, and finds it ample. Men are prone to forget, Dr. Remy, that the natural order—as we see in children—is through the heart to the intellect, not through the intellect to the heart."

"But," objected Doctor Remy, "if a man is not sensible of any such personal need, how is he to be made to feel it?"

"Who can tell?" responded Mr. Islay, solemnly. "If the eye sees no comeliness in Christ, to desire Him, if the heart feels no void which craves His fulness, no pang which needs His healing, who can tell when the one will be opened, the other emptied or smitten? \'The wind bloweth where it listeth.\' But I can tell you, Doctor Remy, how a man can postpone the time of conviction to the last moment, perhaps to the very end."

"Indeed," answered Doctor Remy, lifting his eyebrows. "May I ask for the formula?"

"Simply by leading a life of deliberate, habitual sin and selfishness. There is nothing like sin for blinding the eyes, and misleading the judgment, in regard to spiritual things. Indeed, if I desired to shake my own faith in Christ to the very centre, I know no way in which I could do it so surely as by committing some dreadful crime—murder, for instance. All my views of life and death, earth and heaven, would at once become distorted and confused, just as all my thoughts and aims would immediately take a new direction."

Mr. Islay being on the same side of the table as his interlocutor, could not observe the latter\'s sudden change of countenance; but Bergan, sitting opposite, was surprised to see the doctor\'s face darken with some powerful emotion, while he shot a furtive, suspicious glance at the speaker. Yet his voice, when he spoke, was studiously low and even, so much so that its latent venom was unnoticed by the majority of the party.

"Inasmuch," said he, "as Mr. Islay is able to speak so intelligently of religious faith, because of his thorough acquaintance therewith, so, doubtles............