letters according to their handwriting, so that she could arrange them
afterwards, and destroy or keep, as she planned, looking ever onward to
her death. Then, after the sofa was brought in, she would watch my face,
and if she saw my colour change, she would bid me lie down and rest. And
I used to try to walk upon the terrace every day for a short time: it
hurt me very much, it is true, but the doctor had ordered it, and I knew
her ladyship wished me to obey.

Before I had seen the background of a great lady's life, I had thought it
all play and fine doings. But whatever other grand people are, my lady
was never idle. For one thing, she had to superintend the agent for the
large Hanbury estate. I believe it was mortgaged for a sum of money
which had gone to improve the late lord's Scotch lands; but she was
anxious to pay off this before her death, and so to leave her own
inheritance free of incumbrance to her son, the present Earl; whom, I
secretly think, she considered a greater person, as being the heir of the
Hanburys (though through a female line), than as being my Lord Ludlow
with half a dozen other minor titles.

With this wish of releasing her property from the mortgage, skilful care
was much needed in the management of it; and as far as my lady could go,
she took every pains. She had a great book, in which every page was
ruled into three divisions; on the first column was written the date and
the name of the tenant who addressed any letter on business to her; on
the second was briefly stated the subject of the letter, which generally
contained a request of some kind. This request would be surrounded and
enveloped in so many words, and often inserted amidst so many odd reasons
and excuses, that Mr. Horner (the steward) would sometimes say it was
like hunting through a bushel of chaff to find a grain of wheat. Now, in
the second column of this book, the grain of meaning was placed, clean