Her faith was too weak; the prayer too heavy to be thus uplifted. It fell back, a lump of lead, upon her heart. It smote her with the wretched conviction that Providence intermeddled not in these petty wrongs of one individual to his fellow, nor had any balm for these little agonies of a solitary soul; but shed its justice, and its mercy, in a broad, sunlike sweep, over half the universe at once. Its vastness made it nothing. But Hepzibah did not see that, just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God’s care and pity for every separate need.

At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the torture that she was to inflict on Clifford, — her reluctance to which was the true cause of her loitering at the window, her search for the artist, and even her abortive prayer,