No doubt it had been a very handsome face though never beautiful, I imagine; it was too strong and firm and resolute; too like the face of some man we see, which, though we have but a momentary sight of it in a passing crowd, affects us like a sudden puff of icy-cold air--the revelation of a singular and powerful personality.

Yet she was only a poor old broken-down woman in a Wiltshire village, held fast in her chair by a hopeless infirmity.

With her legs paralysed she was like that prince in the Eastern tale on whom an evil spell had been cast, turning the lower half of his body into marble.

But she did not, like the prince, shed incessant tears and lament her miserable destiny with a loud voice.

She was patient and cheerful always, resigned to the will of Heaven, and--a strange thing this to record of an old woman in a village!--she would never speak of her ailments.