under the trees. She had books in plenty, and all the newspapers, and
everything that was needful to keep her within the reflection of the busy
life which she no longer cared to encounter in her own person. The post
rarely brought her painful letters; for all those impassioned interests
which bring pain had died out, and the sorrows of others, when they were
communicated to her, gave her a luxurious sense of sympathy, yet
exemption. She was sorry for them; but such catastrophes could touch her
no more: and often she had pleasant letters, which afforded her something
to talk and think about, and discuss as if it concerned her,--and yet did
not concern her,--business which could not hurt her if it failed, which
would please her if it succeeded. Her letters, her papers, her books,
each coming at its appointed hour, were all instruments of pleasure. She
came down-stairs at a certain hour, which she kept to as if it had been
of the utmost importance, although it was of no importance at all: she
took just so much good wine, so many cups of tea. Her repasts were as
regular as clockwork--never too late, never too early. Her whole life
went on velvet, rolling smoothly along, without jar or interruption,
blameless, pleasant, kind. People talked of her old age as a model of old
age, with no bitterness or sourness in it. And, indeed, why should she
have been sour or bitter? It suited her far better to be kind. She was in
reality kind to everybody, liking to see pleasant faces about her. The
poor had no reason to complain of her; her servants were very
comfortable; and the one person in her house who was nearer to her own
level, who was her companion and most important minister, was very
comfortable too. This was a young woman about twenty, a very distant
relation, with "no claim," everybody said, upon her kind mistress and
friend,--the daughter of a distant cousin. How very few think anything
at all of such a tie! but Lady Mary had taken her young namesake when she
was a child, and she had grown up as it were at her godmother's
footstool, in the conviction that the measured existence of the old was