country, she telegraphed to him:

"Mind you hit below the belt!"

She was full of nature and impulse, free, enterprising and
unconcerned. She rode as well as I did, but was not so quick to
hounds nor so conscious of what was going on all round her.

One day when the Rifle Brigade was quartered at Winchester,
Ribblesdale--who was a captain--sent Charty out hunting with old
Tubb, the famous dealer, from whom he had hired her mount. As he
could not accompany her himself, he was anxious to know how her
ladyship had got on; the old rascal-wanting to sell his horse--
raised his eyes to heaven and gasped:

"Hornamental palings! My lord!!"

It was difficult to find a better-looking couple than Charty and
Ribblesdale; I have often observed people following them in
picture-galleries; and their photographs appeared in many of the
London shop-windows.

My next sister, Lucy, [Footnote: Mrs. Graham Smith, of Easton
Grey, Malmesbury.] was the most talented and the best educated of
the family. She fell between two stools in her youth, because
Charty and Posie were of an age to be companions and Laura and I;
consequently she did not enjoy the happy childhood that we did and
was mishandled by the authorities both in the nursery and the
schoolroom. When I was thirteen she made a foolish engagement, so
that our real intimacy only began after her marriage. She was my