you see at Hampton Court. At the back are the gables, and arched
doorways, and stone mullions, which show (so Lady Ludlow used to tell us)
that it was once a priory. There was a prior's parlour, I know--only we
called it Mrs. Medlicott's room; and there was a tithe-barn as big as a
church, and rows of fish-ponds, all got ready for the monks' fasting-days
in old time. But all this I did not see till afterwards. I hardly
noticed, this first night, the great Virginian Creeper (said to have been
the first planted in England by one of my lady's ancestors) that half
covered the front of the house. As I had been unwilling to leave the
guard of the coach, so did I now feel unwilling to leave Randal, a known
friend of three hours. But there was no help for it; in I must go; past
the grand-looking old gentleman holding the door open for me, on into the
great hall on the right hand, into which the sun's last rays were sending
in glorious red light,--the gentleman was now walking before me,--up a
step on to the dais, as I afterwards learned that it was called,--then
again to the left, through a series of sitting-rooms, opening one out of
another, and all of them looking into a stately garden, glowing, even in
the twilight, with the bloom of flowers. We went up four steps out of
the last of these rooms, and then my guide lifted up a heavy silk curtain
and I was in the presence of my Lady Ludlow.

She was very small of stature, and very upright. She wore a great lace
cap, nearly half her own height, I should think, that went round her head
(caps which tied under the chin, and which we called "mobs," came in
later, and my lady held them in great contempt, saying people might as
well come down in their nightcaps). In front of my lady's cap was a
great bow of white satin ribbon; and a broad band of the same ribbon was
tied tight round her head, and served to keep the cap straight. She had
a fine Indian muslin shawl folded over her shoulders and across her
chest, and an apron of the same; a black silk mode gown, made with short