“Grandpa, has anybody been telling you anything?” she asked.

“No, nothing about you.”

“Then I’ll just tell you all.”  And she gave him a history of Isadore’s efforts to pervert her, and their effect upon her; also of the conversation of that afternoon, in which Mr. Daly had answered the questions of Isadore, that had most perplexed and troubled her.

Mr. Dinsmore was grieved and distressed by Isa’s defection from the evangelical faith, and indignant at her attempt to lead Vi astray also.

“Are you fully satisfied now on all the points?” he asked.

“There are one or two things I should like to ask you about, grandpa,” she said.  “Isa thinks a convent life so beautiful and holy, so shut out from the world, with all its cares and wickedness, she says; so quiet and peaceful, so full of devotion and the self-denial the Lord Jesus taught when he said, ’If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’

“Do you think leaving one’s dear home and father and mother, and brothers and sisters to be shut up for life with strangers, in a convent, was the cross he meant, grandpa?”

“No, I am perfectly sure it was not; the Bible teaches us to do our duty in the place where God puts us; it recognizes the family relationships; teaches the reciprocal duties of kinsmen, parents and children, husbands and wives, but has not a word to say to monks or nuns.

“It bids us take up the cross God lays upon us, and not one of our own invention; nor did one of the holy men and women it tells of live the life of an anchorite.  Nor can peace and freedom from temptation and sin be found in a convent any more than elsewhere; because we carry our evil natures with us wherever we go.”

“No; peace and happiness are to be found only in being ’followers of God as dear children,’ doing our duty in that station in life where he has placed us; our motive love to him; leading us to desire above all things to live to his honor and glory.”

Violet sat with downcast eyes, her face full of earnest thought.  She was silent for a moment after Mr. Dinsmore had ceased speaking, then lifting her head and turning to him with a relieved look, “Thank you, grandpa,” she said.  “I am fully satisfied on that point.  Now, there is just one more.  Isa says the divisions among Protestants show that the Bible is not a book for common people to read for themselves.  They cannot understand it right; if they did they would all believe alike.”

Mr. Dinsmore smiled.  “Who is to explain it?” he asked.

“Oh, Isa says that is for the priests to do; and they and the people must accept the decisions of the church.”

“Well, my child, it would take too much time to tell you just how impossible it is to find out what are the authoritative decisions of the Romish Church on more than one important point;—­how one council would contradict another—­one pope affirm what his predecessors had denied, and vice versa; councils contradict popes, and popes councils.