The alarm and mortification she had endured
in that neighbourhood made her recollect the village with disgust; but
there were some mysteries which she wished him to explain. Nursery tales
affirm, that Puss, when converted into a fine lady, retained her old
propensity of catching mice; and though Lady Bellingham was transformed
from a fine lady into a devotee, the renovating spirit of true religion
had not altered her temper or inclinations; there was the same
waywardness in the former, the same cold selfishness in the latter.
While she raved at formal and legal Christians, she was herself the true
formalist, presuming on superior merit from the length of her devotional
exercises, her rigid austerities, and the sums she expended in spreading
her peculiar notions. But she came out of her closet to make her inmates
and dependants wretched; her fasting-days were unsanctified through
moroseness, and beside that, her gifts were too much confined to
party-purposes to be entitled to the praise of charity; ostentation blew
the trumpet before her alms, and she had the reward she sought, in the
praise of men.
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