has probably never heard of the corrupted, or any version of the
Epistles of St Ignatius, but she would accept the corruptions bodily
upon the smallest hint that they savoured better with the hierarchy, and
she would do all this apparently in good faith on the authority of a
purblind party within the Church, which exists to keep open its wounds.
Now, I submit that a _volte face_ is possible, especially in religious
opinions, but that a pronounced habit of religious thought cannot be
acquired in a day, so that, in the history of Miss Vaughan's conversion,
there is more than can be discerned on the surface. The precise nature
of the element which eludes must be left to the judgment of my readers,
but, personally, I reserve my own, out of fairness to an unfinished
deposition.

There is a generic difference between Doctor Bataille and Miss Vaughan.
He is an ordinary human being, and if we may trust the many pictures
which represent him in his narrative, exceedingly unpretending at that.
We have also some portraits of Miss Vaughan, who is aggressive and good
to look at; but this is not the generic distinction. Doctor Bataille,
poor man, is the scion of an ordinary ancestry within the narrow limits
of flesh and blood. Miss Vaughan, on the contrary--I hope my readers
will bear with me--has been taught from her childhood to believe that
she was of the blood royal of the descending hierarchy, and I cannot
gather from her vague mode of expression whether she has altogether
rejected the legend of her descent, which is otherwise sufficiently
startling.

The position of authority and influence occupied by Miss Vaughan in what
she terms high Masonry is to be explained, as she modestly informs us,
not by her personal qualities, but by a traditional secret concerning
her family, which is known only to the Elect Magi. Miss Vaughan and her
paternal uncle are the last descendants of the alchemist Thomas Vaughan,
whom she terms a Rosicrucian, and identifies with Eirenaeus Philalethes,
author of "The Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King." On the
25th of March 1645, she tells us, on the authority of her family
history, Thomas Vaughan, having previously obtained from Cromwell the
privilege of beheading the "noble martyr" Laud, Archbishop of
Canterbury--the title to nobility, in her opinion, seems to rest in the
probability of his secret connection with Rome--steeped a linen cloth in
his blood, burnt the said cloth in sacrifice to S