Mr. Lurton made excuse to himself for another trip to Metropolisville that he had business in Perritaut.  It was business that might have waited; it was business that would have waited, but for his desire to talk further with Mrs. Plausaby, and for his other desire to see and talk with Isabel Marlay again.  For, if he should fail of her, where would he ever find one so well suited to help the usefulness of his life?  Happy is he whose heart and duty go together!  And now that Lurton had found that Charlton had no first right to Isabel, his worst fear had departed.

Even in his palpitating excitement about Isa, he was the true minister, and gave his first thought to the spiritual wants of the afflicted woman whom he regarded as providentially thrown upon his care.  He was so fortunate as to find Plausaby absent at Perritaut.  But how anxiously did he wait for the time when he could see the sick woman!  Even Isa almost lost her patience with Mrs. Plausaby’s characteristic desire to be fixed up to receive company.  She must have her hair brushed and her bed “tidied,” and, when Isabel thought she had concluded everything, Mrs. Plausaby would insist that all should be undone again and fixed m some other way.  Part of this came from her old habitual vanity, aggravated by the querulous childishness produced by sickness, and part from a desire to postpone as long as she could an interview which she greatly dreaded.  Isa knew that time was of the greatest value, and so, when she had complied with the twentieth unreasonable exaction of the sick woman, and was just about to hear the twenty-first, she suddenly opened the door of Mrs. Plausaby’s sickroom and invited Mr. Lurton to enter.

And then began again the old battle—­the hardest conflict of all—­the battle with vacillation.  To contend with a stubborn will is a simple problem of force against force.  But to contend with a weak and vacillating will is fighting the air.

Mrs. Plausaby said she had something to say to Mr. Lurton.  But—­dear me—­she was so annoyed!  The room was not fit for a stranger to see.  She must look like a ghost.  There was something that worried her.  She was afraid she was going to die, and she had—­did Mr. Lurton think she would die?  Didn’t he think she might get well?

Mr. Lurton had to say that, in his opinion, she could never get well, and that if there was anything on her mind, she would better tell it.

Didn’t Isa think she could get well?  She didn’t want to die.  But then Katy was dead.  Would she go to heaven if she died?  Did Mr. Lurton think that if she had done wrong, she ought to confess it?  Couldn’t she be forgiven without that?  Wouldn’t he pray for her unless she confessed it?  He ought not to be so hard on her.  Would God be hard on her if she did not tell it all?  Oh! she was so miserable!

Mr. Lurton told her that sometimes people committed sin by refusing to confess because their confession had something to do with other people.  Was her confession necessary to remove blame from others?