Myrtle herself did not profess to have passed through the technical stages of the customary spiritual paroxysm.

Still, the gentle daughter of the terrible preacher loved her and judged her kindly.

She was modest enough to think that perhaps the natural state of some girls might be at least as good as her own after the spiritual change of which she had been the subject.

A manifest heresy, but not new, nor unamiable, nor inexplicable.
The excellent Bishop Joseph Hall, a painful preacher and solid divine of Puritan tendencies, declares that he prefers good-nature before grace in the election of a wife; because, saith he, "it will be a hard Task, where the Nature is peevish and froward, for Grace to make an entire Conquest whilst Life lasteth." An opinion apparently entertained by many modern ecclesiastics, and one which may be considered very encouraging to those young ladies of the politer circles who have a fancy for marrying bishops and other fashionable clergymen.

Not of course that "grace" is so rare a gift among the young ladies of the upper social sphere; but they are in the habit of using the word with a somewhat different meaning from that which the good Bishop attached to it..