"Now, my dear, I don't want to make you proud and puff you up, but as I am telling you all this, I must add that I found not one slip in you. I cannot understand how you have done it. It seems to me that you must have a very large amount of what Patient calls 'grace,' that I, who have been watching you so narrowly, could detect nothing in you which I thought wrong. Now will you forgive me for the ordeal through which, unknown to you, I have been putting you? The conclusion to which it has led me is this:--This thing--this religion of yours and Patient's--call it fear of God, or what you will--is a real thing. It is not the disordered fancy of one good woman, as I for a time imagined that it might be. It is a genuine compact and converse between God and your souls, and I only wish I were one of you." Rather to Philip's surprise, Celia, who while he spoke had been earnestly regarding him, with brilliant eyes and smiling lips, put her head down and burst into tears. "My dear!" he said. "O Philip, I am so glad!" she said,--"so glad, so thankful--so very, very glad!" And she sobbed for pure joy. "Then I am very glad that I have told you, my dear. And if it gives you any satisfaction, I will say again what I have said:--from my soul I wish I were one of you!" [1] The ugly word "ex-queen" had not yet come into use, and the English spoke of Maria Beatrice as they would have done if she had died. [2] I must own to having left my heroine's letter defective in one point. In her day ladies' orthography was in a dreadful state. Queen Anne usually signed herself the "affectionat freind" of her correspondents; and it had only just ceased to be the fashion for ladies to employ the longest words they could pick up, using them in an incorrect sense, and with a wrong pronunciation. Addison gives an account of one French lady who having unfortunately pronounced a hard word correctly, and employed it in the proper sense, "all the ladies in the Court were out of countenance for her." [3] Headache. [4] Luke vii. 36. [5] Sam. xii. 7. [6] Prince Eugene was now besieging Landrécies, a town on the border between France and Flanders. [7] Isaiah ix. 6. [8] Acts vii. 58; viii. 1. [9] Gal. ii. 12. [10] 3 Tim. iv. 14. [11] 1 Cor. xv. 22. [12] Rom. vii. 18. [13] John xvii. 12. [14] Acts i. 25. [15] 1 Cor. xiii. 1, 2. [16] Matt. xxv. 40. [17] Mark xvi. 16. [18] Titus i. 15. [19] Heb. x. 22. [20] Heb. ix. 14, [21] 1 Tim. [22] Isaiah xlix. 4. [23] Ibid. 5. [24] Philippe, younger son of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria: born August 2, 1674; died December 2, 1723. [25] Marguerite Louise, daughter of Gaston Duke of Orleans and Marguerite of Lorraine: born July 28, 1645; married at the Louvre, April 19, 1661; died in France, September 17, 1721. [26] Marie Anne, natural daughter of Louis XIV. and Louise de La Vallière: born at Vincennes, October 2, 1666; married, January 16, 1680, Louis Prince of Conti; died May 3, 1739.