Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/142

132 and common sense to them in this way, else how are they to get it? I go for educating the non-electors, so I put myself in the way of my pupils—my academy is the beer-house. I'll walk with you to-morrow with great pleasure."

"Do so, do so," said Mr. Lyon, shaking hands with his odd acquaintance. "We shall understand each other better by-and-by, I doubt not."

"I wish you good-evening, Miss Lyon."

Esther bowed very slightly, without speaking.

"That is a singular young man, Esther," said the minister, walking about after Felix was gone. "I discern in him a love for whatsoever things are honest and true, which I would fain believe to be an earnest of further endowment with the wisdom that is from on high. It is true that, as the traveller in the desert is often lured, by a false vision of water and freshness, to turn aside from the track which leads to the tried and established fountains, so the Evil One will take advantage of a natural yearning towards the better, to delude the soul with a self-flattering belief in a visionary virtue, higher than the ordinary fruits of the Spirit. But I trust it is not so here. I feel a great enlargement in this young man's presence, notwithstanding a certain