personal influence was great; but he felt that it was not yet, and perhaps never could be, strong enough to stand the scandal of his marriage to a woman whose opinions were believed to be radical.  On this point he was not left in doubt, for the mere suspicion of his engagement raised a little tempest in the pool.  The stricter sect, not without reason, were scandalized.  They held to their creed, and the bare mention of Esther Dudley’s name called warm protests from their ranks.  They flatly said that it would be impossible for Mr. Hazard to make them believe his own doctrine to be sound, if he could wish to enter into such a connection.  None but a free-thinker could associate with the set of free-thinkers, artists and other unusual people whose society Mr. Hazard was known to affect, and his marriage to one of them would give the unorthodox a hold on the parish which would end by splitting it.

One of his strongest friends, who had done most to bring him to New York and make his path pleasant, came to him with an account of what was said and thought, softening the expression so as to bear telling.

“You ought to hear about it,” said he, “so I tell you; but it is between you and me.  I don’t ask whether you are engaged to Miss Dudley.  For my own pleasure, I wish you may be.  If I were thirty years younger I would try for her myself; but we all know that she has very little more religious experience than a white rosebud.  I’m not strict myself, I don’t mind a little looseness on the creed, but the trouble is that every old woman in the parish knows all about the family.  Her father, William Dudley, a great friend of mine as you know, was a man who liked to defy opinion and never hid his contempt for ours.  He paid for a pew at St. John’s because, he said, society needs still that sort of police.  But he has told me a dozen times that he could get more police for his money by giving it to the Roman Catholics.  He never entered his pew.  His brother-in-law Murray is just as bad, never goes near the church, and is always poking fun at us who do.  The professor is a full-fledged German Darwinist, and believes in nothing that I know of, unless it is himself.  Esther took to society, and I’m told by my young people that she was one of the best waltzers in town until she gave it up for painting and dinners.  Her set never bothered their heads about the church.  Of the whole family, Mrs. Murray is the only one who has any weight in the parish, and she has a good deal, but if I know her, she won’t approve the match any more than the rest, and you must expect to get the reputation of being unorthodox.  Only yesterday old Tarbox told me he thought you were rather weak on the Pentateuch, and the best I could say was that now-a-days we must choose between weak doctrines and weak brains, and of the two, I preferred to let up on the Pentateuch.”