---- there. When she first came to the estate, her husband had been
some years dead, and Lady Catherine brought with her a son, who was to
be heir--at that time a boy like myself--and two handsome grown-up
daughters. The castle was a great fabric, partly old and partly new.
It stood in the midst of a noble park, with tall trees and red deer in
it. Its last possessor had been a stingy old bachelor; but after Lady
Catherine's coming, the housekeeping was put on a grand scale. There
was a retinue of English servants, and continual company. I remember
it well, for just then my poor mother died. She had been a widow,
living in a low cottage hard by the park-wall, with me and a gray cat
for company, and her spinning-wheel for our support. I was but a child
when she died; and having neither uncle nor aunt in the parish, they
took me, I think, by her ladyship's order, into the castle, to run
small errands, and help in the garden; from which post, in process of
time, I rose to that of footman. Lady Catherine was in great odour
with the country gentry for her high-breeding, her fashionable
connections, and her almost boundless hospitality. She was popular
with the tenantry too, for there was not a better managed estate in
the west, and the factor had general orders against distress and
ejectment.

They said her ladyship had been reckoned a beauty in London
drawing-rooms, and our parish thought her wonderfully grand for the
gay dresses and rich jewellery she wore. Doubtless, these were but the
cast-offs of the season, for regularly every spring she and the family
went up to London, where they kept a fine house, and what is called
the best society. How much the gay dresses had to do with the beauty
is not for me to say, but Lady Catherine was a large, stately woman,
with a dark complexion, and very brilliant red, which the servants
whispered was laid on in old court fashion. Her manner to her equals