This world of ours is the nursery of devils as well as of
saints."
"And what becomes of those that are neither?" asked Vavasor.
"It were hard to say," replied Mr. Raymount with some seriousness.
"A confoundedly peculiar family!" said Vavasor to himself. "There's a
bee in every bonnet of them! An odd, irreverent way the old fellow has
with him--for an old fellow pretending to believe what he says!"
Vavasor was not one of the _advanced_ of the age; he did not deny
there was a God: he thought that the worse form that it was common in
the bank; the fellows he associated with never took the trouble to deny
him; they took their own way, and asked no questions. When a man has not
the slightest intention that the answer shall influence his conduct, why
should he inquire whether there be a God or not? Vavasor cared more
about the top of his cane than the God whose being he did not take the
trouble to deny. He believed a little less than the maiden aunt with
whom he lived; she believed less than her mother, and her mother had
believed less than hers; so that for generations the faith, so called,
of the family had been dying down, simply because all that time it had
sent out no fresh root of obedience.
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