CHAPTER XIV.
WIDOWHOOD.
There was nothing to detain Mrs. Wesley at Epworth after her few affairs were settled and her sons had returned to Tiverton and Oxford. Samuel took Kezia home with him, and the mother took up her abode for a season with her eldest daughter at Gainsborough. It was no doubt a comfort to her to be with Emilia as the attachment between them had always been very strong, and Martha, the other daughter, who was particularly devoted to her mother, was in London, and preparing to be married. The man to whom she was engaged was Mr. Wesley, or Westley Hall, the friend and disciple of her brothers at Oxford, who was mentioned in some of Mrs. Wesley's letters to her sons. Martha first met him while keeping her uncle Matthew's house in London, where he proposed to her and was accepted, and he afterwards accompanied John and Charles to Epworth, where, curiously enough, no one seems to have known anything about his engagement, and he made diligent love to Kezia. After winning her affections, he pretended to have a vision from heaven forbidding the match, and, probably being quite aware of Mr. Matthew Wesley's kind intentions towards his
