Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/118

102 Continent, and saw the brilliant life of many great cities, as well as that of London and Edinburgh.

This lady lived to record that her career was unprofitable and idle. She was not happy in this state. There was a latent perception that life was given for a higher purpose than dressing and visiting, laughing and talking—that under the thin veil of pleasure there lurked selfishness and vice—and her moral sense was aroused. In her distress, she sought refuge in her Bible,—that fortress for the weary soul—that asylum for the sin-sick spirit. The Scriptures soon became to her—what they are to every earnest student—a guide through the labyrinth of the world.

One day she was found by gay companions reading the Bible, and they ventured to ridicule her, and spread a report that the Marchioness of Huntly had turned Methodist. The weapon of ridicule, while it alarms the weak, is often a useful goad to arouse the strong. Lady Huntly was not a person to be laughed out of her convictions. More than ever she resolved to persevere in a new endeavour to attain a higher life than she had yet lived, and grace was given her to begin to work for God and man with a zeal that never wearied.

At Kimbolton Castle her entire change in the mode of employing her time was first known among her circle. Lady Olivia Sparrow, of pious memory, became her friend, and some few like-minded women of rank were her companions.