The next day was Sunday, and whatever might be the social licence with which the young Barringtons overleaped the pale of the Society on the week-days, they all duly attended the morning meetings in town. The large family carriage regularly rolled up to the Meeting House gates in Houndsditch, and they descended to an hour and a half’s quiet musing of some sort in that still and shady tabernacle. Ah! that stillness! How little it suited the beating heart and tortured bosom of Millicent Heritage. Charles Lamb says, that he once got into a Quaker’s meeting, and never went through such a process of spiritual inquisition before. He found himself asking himself more questions in one short hour, than he could have answered in a year. What, then, must have been the condition of Millicent Heritage? Loving, sensitive, educated in a straight line of honour, purity, and truth—and guilty? Who shall depict the tortures of that age-long hour and a half? She went back to her past life; to its peace, its innocence, her deep enjoyment of existence and of nature; and then she turned a scared eye on the purple cloud and rapturous whirlwind in which she had lately been floating far above the darkened scenes and landscapes of the past. What would her father and mother say—if she proved faithless to her most solemn vows and most sacred engagements? Could she really give up Dr. Leroy for another—honourable, gifted, learned, and amiable as he was? Ay,—but that was no longer the question; did she, could she still love him? The answer from that strange thing, the heart, made a thrill of sickening cold pass through her. There was a spirit in it that mocked her; a chill that she could not cast out, a fire in another quarter of it, that she could not command. A sense of despair seized her that was more terrible than death, she prayed to die, and had she been alone, could have flung herself on the floor and cried aloud for death. At this moment arose an aged woman in the gallery opposite to her. She was clad in the simplest garb of grey, and over it a light cloak of grey. She laid down her bonnet of the most rigorously antiquated make and material, and displayed a coarse muslin cap over her grey hair, as destitute of grace or ornament as any human hand could fashion. Millicent knew her well. She was from Ireland, and bore the unambitious name of Grubb.