Here and there a letter would gradually transform itself
into a prayer, and end with a doxology and no signature; and some of them
expressed such wild and disordered views respecting religion, as I imagine
he can never have disclosed to good Mr. Fairfield, and which approached
more nearly to the Swedenborg visions than to anything in the Church of
England.
I read these with a solemn interest, but my cousin Monica was not similarly
moved. She read them with the same smile--faint, serenely contemptuous,
I thought--with which she had first looked down upon them. It was the
countenance of a person who amusedly traces the working of a character that
is well understood.
'Uncle Silas is very religious?' I said, not quite liking Lady Knollys'
looks.
'Very,' she said, without raising her eyes or abating her old bitter smile,
as she glanced over a passage in one of his letters.
'You don't think he _is_, Cousin Monica?' said I. She raised her head and
looked straight at me.
'Why do you say that, Maud?'
'Because you smile incredulously, I think, over his letters.'
'Do I?' said she; 'I was not thinking--it was quite an accident.
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