Prayer acquired a significance she had never seen in it before; the tone of the prayer, too, was different from the set didactic utterances too often called prayer, in which there is as much doctrine and as little devotion as extempore prayer is capable of.  It was not expostulatory either, as if our Heavenly Father needed much urging to make Him listen to our wants and our aspirations, but calm, trusting, and elevated, as if God was near, and not far off from any one of His creatures—­as if we could lay our griefs and our cares, our joys and our hopes, at His feet, knowing that we are sure of His blessing.  Was this union with God, then, really possible?  Was there an inner life that could flow on smoothly and calmly heavenward, in spite of the shocks, and jars, and temptations of the outer life?  Could she learn to see and acknowledge God’s goodness even in the bitterness of the cup that was now at her lips?

It was no careless or preoccupied listener who followed point after point of the sermon on the necessity of suffering for the perfecting of the Christian character.  The thoughts were genuine thoughts, not borrowed from old books, but worked out of the very soul of the preacher; and the language, clear, vigorous, and modern, clothed these thoughts in the most impressive manner.  There were none of the conventionalisms of the pulpit orator, who often weakens the strongest ideas by the hackneyed or obsolete phraseology he uses.

“Thank you, cousin Francis,” said Jane, as they walked back to Mr. Rennie’s together.  “This is, indeed, medicine to a mind diseased.  I will make my inquiries as I ought to do tomorrow; but if I fail I will send in my application; and if I succeed there, I will go to this asylum in a more contented spirit.  It appears as if it were to be my work, and with God’s help I will do it well.”

Jane began her next day’s work by calling on her Edinburgh acquaintances, and then went to the registry offices; but Monday’s inquiries were no more successful than Saturday’s; so she dropped her letter in the post, and felt as many people, especially women, do when an important missive has left them for ever to go to the hands to which it is addressed.  It seems so irrevocable, they doubt the wisdom of the step and fear the consequences.

When Jane reached home and told her sister of the application she had sent in, Elsie was horrified at the prospect, and shook her sister’s courage still more by the pictures she conjured up of Jane’s life at such a place, and of her own without the one dearest to her heart; but after she had said all she could in that way, it occurred to her that if her poems succeeded, as she had no doubt they would, Jane’s slavery need but be shortlived.  Her work had made great progress during the short time of her sister’s absence, and she continued to apply to it with indefatigable industry.  Scarcely would the ardent girl allow herself to think of anything but what to write;—­the tension was too severe, but Elsie would take nothing in moderation.