and panting throng she appeared in a plain but elegant dress of sober brown brocade, ‘powdered with silver flowers.’ A smile may mock this humility of a court lady, but the costly and continental simplicity was encountered by her half-brother the King (for it was in George II.’s time that this occurred) with a frown. He had not yet learned to honour pious men or women of any creed, and he had little respect for Lady Huntingdon or Whitfield. He accordingly made two or three steps in advance to the shrinking lady, and rather rudely remarked, ‘I know who selected that gown for you; it must have been Mr. Whitfield. I hear you have been a follower of his for this year and a half.’ Lady Chesterfield mildly replied, ‘I have, and very well do I like him,’ and withdrew; but she afterwards used to regret that she had not said more when she had so excellent an opportunity for uttering a word in season with effect. Lady Huntingdon hoped, for some time, that a sense of religion might soon touch the heart of the Earl, who continued to be polite and impious to the last. He laughingly called death a leap in the dark, and he obstinately refused the light which would have saved him from leaping to his destruction. The nearest approach he ever made to being converted by Lady Huntingdon was when he once sent her a subscription towards building a chapel, and earnestly implored her not to expose him to ridicule by revealing the fact! His noble wife--for she _was_ a wife--true woman, rising above the shame of her birth, and resolute to save even him who was resolute and resigned to perish, was most assiduous at the death-bed of a husband who was as anxious as Charles II. to be courteous and civil, even in death. His last day on earth was the 24th of March, 1773; and his courtesy had well-nigh failed him when he heard that his wife had sent for Mr. Rowland Hill to attend him. ‘Dear Lady Chesterfield,’ says Lady Huntingdon, in one of her letters detailing ‘the blackness of darkness’ which had thickened round his dying moments, ‘Dear Lady Chesterfield could not be persuaded to leave his room for an instant. What unmitigated anguish has she endured! But her confidential communications I am not at liberty to disclose. The curtain has fallen; his immortal part has passed to another state of existence. Oh, my soul, come not thou unto _his_ end!’