Once, at Louvain, I saw a statue in the cathedral to the memory of Dr. Stapleton. I could not make out who Dr. Stapleton was, or why he was thus honoured. Baedeker and Murray knew him not. Accidentally one day turning over the pages of Froude—certainly one of the most graceful of historians—I discovered that Dr. Stapleton, living at Louvain, was the means of communication, in the ‘spacious times of Queen Elizabeth,’ between the Pope on the one side and the Roman Catholics in England on the other. At Brussels her ladyship acted in a similar way, though on a smaller scale. It was she who kept alive the communication between the Belgian and the English Evangelicals, and helped to circulate among the former the goody-goody literature in which the latter greatly rejoiced. Her activity in the matter was intense. She was always writing to England for supplies—which were sent her without any cost to herself—and in her continental drawing-room, and at her receptions, sleek divines and elect ladies were not few, ever ready to bewail the degeneracy of the times, the growth of Popery and Republicanism and Atheism. Perhaps it was they who frightened the Colonel away. At any rate it is manifest that he would have been a better husband had she been a better wife. When the news came of his brother’s death it is needless to say that the Colonel was quite ready for a change of life and scene. Indeed, Belgium was getting too hot for him. The lady who passed as Mrs. Smith had discovered the real name and status of her protector. One of the boys—the result of this domestic arrangement—had gone to a Protestant meeting, and there on the platform, and as one of the speakers, was Captain Smith—announced to the meeting as Colonel Strahan. It was not long before his mother learned the news, nor was it long before she turned that news, as far as her pecuniary resources were concerned, to uncommonly good account. The little domestic arrangement which had been so pleasant at first was now very much the reverse. To shake off the woman was now impossible, and her silence could only be secured at an extravagant price. She had threatened to follow him to Sloville, and it required all his ingenuity to keep the matter a secret. Already he had made up his mind to stand for the county division; already his name had been ostentatiously paraded as president or vice-president of certain famous religious societies, whose headquarters were London. Already, under the auspices of my lady, the Hall had become the headquarters of the Low Church party.