outh and posting to Bath, were tenderly welcomed
by Lady Jane, to whom her son's conversion was hardly less a matter
of rejoicing than his rescue from a living tomb. In Bath Ruth Lady
Vyell might have reigned as a toast, a queen of society; but Sir
Oliver had learnt a distaste for fashionable follies, nor did she
greatly yearn for them.

He remained a Whig, however, and two years later received appointment
to the post of Consul-General at Lisbon. Its duties were not
arduous, and allowed him to cross the Atlantic half a dozen times
with Lady Vyell and revisit Eagles, where Miss Quiney held faithful
stewardship. He never completely recovered his health. The pressure
under which he had lain during those three terrible hours had left
him with some slight curvature of the spine. It increased, and ended
in a constriction of the lungs, bringing on a slow decline. In 1767
he again retired to Bath, where next year he died, aged fifty-one
years. His epitaph on the wall of the Abbey nave runs as follows:--

"To the memory of Sir Oliver Hastings Pelham Vyell of
Carwithiel, Co. Cornwall, Baronet, Consul-General for many
years at Lisbon, whence he came in hopes of Recovery from a Bad
State of Health to Bath. Here, after a tedious and painful
illness, sustained with the Patience and Resignation becoming
to a Christian, he died Jan. 11, 1768, in the Fifty-second Year
of his Life, without Heir. This Monument is erected by his
affectionate Widow, Ruth Lady Vyell."

EPILOGUE

Ruth Lady Vyell stood in the empty minster beneath her husband's
epitaph, and conned it, puckering her brow slightly in the effort to
keep her thoughts collected.

She had not set eyes on the tablet since the day the stonemasons had
fixed it in place; and that was close upon eight years ago. On the
morrow, her pious duty fulfilled, she had taken post for Plymouth,
there to embark for America; and the intervening years had been lived
in widowhood at Eagles until the outbreak of the Revolution had
forced her, early in 1775, to take shelter in Boston, and in the late
fall of the year to sail back to England. For Eagles, though
unravaged, had passed into the hands of the "rebels"; and Ruth,
though an ardent loyalist, kept her old clearness of vision, and
foresaw that King George could not beat his Colonists; that the stars
in their courses fought against this stupid monarch.

This pilgrimage to Bath