Indeed, there were many who would have agreed with him, if they could have seen Miss Esperance at that moment, sitting up in bed propped up with pillows, with a pink bed jacket, not half such a dainty colour as her flushed cheeks, and the adorable white "mutch" framing the shimmering silver of her hair. And here it must be confessed that it is just possible that Miss Esperance knew perfectly well what a pretty old lady she was; for all the other old ladies of her time wore "fronts"—dreadful, aggressive, black, brown or yellow fronts—whether they had any hair or not. To wear one’s own white hair was unusual even to boldness; and yet, Miss Esperance, most decorous and delicately feminine of womankind, quietly ignored this unpleasing fashion, and was beautiful even as nature had intended her to be. Many and exciting were the Jacobite stories she told to Montagu, till his enthusiasm for the house of Stuart knew no bounds. He read aloud gracefully and with understanding, and his reading of the Bible was a never-failing source of delight to Miss Esperance. She would lie with shining eyes and overflowing heart while the boy’s voice, gravely emphatic and justly modulated, proclaimed to her the divine message to which she had ever lent so willing an ear. She even grew accustomed to the enunciation of Montagu’s "extraordinary views"; as, when one day he had read to her the story of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, he said dreamily: "It’s curious, isn’t it, how disagreeable nearly all the women in the Bible are?" "Oh, Montagu!" Miss Esperance exclaimed distressedly. "Think of the mother of our Lord, and Mary, and Martha, and Dorcas——" "Well, aunt," he interrupted, "you know in the Old Testament there’s very few of them at all kind and nice. The Greek women were far better: look at Alcestis, and Penelope, and Polyxena! I don’t like those Hebrew women at all; they were so vindictive and dishonourable. Fancy you behaving like Sara or Rachel or Jael!—why even Helen was far nicer than most of them, and she wasn’t considered particularly good though she was so beautiful." "Tell me about Alcestis," said Miss Esperance, lying back on her pillows and feeling unequal just then to a discussion regarding the relative merits of Hebrew and Greek women. "I’ll fetch you Mr. Wycherly’s ’Euripides,’" Montagu cried eagerly, "and read it to you in English as he used to read it to me. I really think, Aunt Esperance, if you’ll only listen carefully you’ll like it almost as well as the Bible!" And Montagu fled from the room before his aunt’s horrified expostulations reached him. Then began a series of readings from Euripides, followed by arguments between Miss Esperance and Montagu which would have convulsed Mr. Wycherly had he been there to hear them. Their extreme earnestness bridged over the gulf of years between them, and it must be confessed that Miss Esperance took the greatest delight in picking holes in the characters of some of Montagu’s heroes.