ollapse reached England by means of
a cutting in a theatrical paper. There it appears to have touched a
long slumbering maternal chord. "Mrs. Craigie," says a paragraphist,
"suddenly arrived in America, anxious, as next of kin, to secure her
daughter's property. On discovering, however, that none existed, she
hurried back again, leaving behind her a sum of three pounds for
medicine and other necessities."

Cast off by her fair-weather friends, bereft of her looks,
poverty-stricken, and ravaged by an insidious illness, the situation
of Lola Montez was, during that winter of 1860, one to excite pity
among the most severe of judges. Under duress, even her new found
trust in Providence began to falter. Was prayer, she wondered
forlornly, to fail her like everything else? Suddenly, however, and
when things were at their darkest, a helping hand was offered. One
bitter evening, as she sat brooding in the miserable lodging where she
had secured temporary shelter, she was visited by a Mrs. Buchanan,
claiming her as a friend of the long distant past. The years fell
back; and, with an effort, Lola recognised in the visitor a girl, now
a mature matron, whom she had last met in Montrose.

The sympathy of Mrs. Buchanan, shared to the full by her husband, a
prosperous merchant, was of a practical description. Although
familiar with the many lapses in Lola's career, they counted for
nothing beside the fact that she was in sore need. Bygones were
bygones. Insisting that the stricken woman should leave her wretched
surroundings, Mrs. Buchanan took her into her own well-appointed
house, provided doctors and nurses, and did all that was possible to
smooth her path. Deeply religious herself, she soon won back her
faltering faith, and summoned a clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Hawks, to
prepare her for the inevitable and rapidly approaching end.

A smug little booklet, _The Story of a Penitent: Lola Montez_,
published under the auspices of the "Protestant Society for the
Promotion of Evangelical Knowledge," was afterwards written by this
shepherd. Since his name did not appear on the title page, he was able
to make several unctuous references to himself.

"Most acceptable," he says in one characteristic passage, "were his
ministrations. Refreshing, too, to his own spirit were his interviews
with her."

"It was," he continues, "in the latter part of 1860 that I received a
message from the unhappy woman so well known to the public under the
nam