'But next,' the preacher went on, much gratified and encouraged by these demonstrations, 'I was happily brought acquainted with that precious sister, that incomparable disciple of Mr. Wesley, whom we call the Elect Lady. Then I awoke to light, and saw that it was laid upon me to preach, continually and unceasingly, making in every town confession of my offences. That dear lady, friends, promises for this once (she is as modest as she is generous and good) to tell us the moving story of her own early dangers, while she was a dweller in the tents of--of Shem, I think.'

The congregation cheered and stamped with their feet, all but a few who were rolling on the floor in fits and foaming at the mouth. Mr. Bunton sat down very warm, and applied himself to the mug of water.

The Elect Lady rose up to her full height, and tossed back her veil over her shoulders.

'Ah, nous sommes trompés,' said the Prince. 'C'est une femme de quarante ans, bien sonnés!'

But Wogan, between the shoulders of the congregation, stared from his dim corner as he had never stared at mortal woman before. The delicate features were thickened, alas, the lips had fallen in, the gold threads had been unwoven out of the dark brown hair. There were two dabs of red on a powdered face, where in time past the natural roses and lilies had bloomed; but the voice and the little Andalusian foot that beat the time with the Elect Lady's periods were the voice and the foot of the once incomparable Smilinda! Nay, when she turned and looked at the converted land-surveyor beside her, Mr. Wogan knew in her gaze the ghost of the glance that had bewitched Scrope, and Kelly, and Colonel Montague, and Lord Sidney Beauclerk, and who knows how many other gallants? In that odd place Wogan felt a black fit of the spleen. A woman's loss of beauty,--Wogan can never think of it unmoved. What tragedy that we men endure or enact is like this?

But her ladyship spoke, and she spoke very well. The congregation, all of them that were not in fits or in laughing hysterics, listened as if to an angel. Heavens! what a story she told of her youth! What dangers encountered! What plots prepared against her virtue, ay, by splendid soldiers, beautiful young lords, and even clergymen; above all, by one monster whom she had discovered to be, not only a monster, but a traitor to the King, and an agent of the Pretender. She was a young thing then, married to an old lord, all unprotected, on every side beset by flattery.

The congregation groaned and swayed at the picture of man's depravity, but Wogan, his spleen quite forgotten, was chuckling with delight.

Yet, all unawakened as she was, said this penitent, an unknown influence had ever shielded her. She remembered how one of these evil ones, the clergyman, after kneeling vainly at her feet, had cried, 'Sure, some invisible power protects your ladyship.'

Here the groans gave place to cries of praise, arms were lifted, the simple, good people wept. Wogan listened with a less devotional air, bending forward on his bench, and rubbing his hands for joy. In truth it had just come upon him that it was his duty to stand up when the Elect Lady sat down, and bear his witness to the truth of her narrative.

'Not to her be the triumph,' she went on, 'all unawakened as she then was, and remained, till she heard Mr. Wesley preach,' and thereafter went through the world with Brother Bunton, converting land-surveyors, colliers, and others.