My dear young master was then in his infancy, and my place not being one of the busiest, I had many hours of leisure, which I was allowed to dispose of as suited my inclination: these hours I chiefly spent in the nursery, and, being remarkably fond of children, I soon became so strongly attached to the young lord, that I often regretted the necessity of leaving him, which I was sometimes obliged to do for weeks and months together, either when your lordship took my lady to town, paid visits to your friends, or went to any other of your estates; and once, if you recollect, you were absent a long time, when you carried my lady to Montpellier, whose declining health led you to adopt this plan for her recovery, which the physicians said would perfectly restore that bloom a slow and nervous fever had stolen from her, and alarmed every friend who saw the ravages sickness had made in a countenance formed to captivate.--Ah! that unfortunate excursion!--I have wished with an aching heart a thousand and a thousand times it had never been made. During our absence my lady lost her fever, and gave birth to a son, who very soon engrossed so much of her time and affection, that your lordship had just reason to complain of the change it produced. There was another change which you did not so soon discover. During our residence among a parcel of jabbering foreigners, my lady learned to despise the blessed manners and customs of her native country, and all those feelings which once made her so charming. We must eat, drink, sleep, dress, and do every thing after the French fashion. I was often reproved for retaining more than any of my fellow-servants my clumsy English manners. She frequently expressed her satisfaction that her son first saw the light on the Gallic shore, where, if she could have persuaded your lordship, she would have continued to reside. After an absence of eighteen months, which appeared to me the length of as many years, we returned to England, and found my young lord just recovered from the small-pox, of a very bad sort, which had so much altered him, that my lady believed, or rather affected to believe, that your son had been changed during our absence, or that he might have died, and some designing artful people had imposed their own offspring upon you, to usurp his rights, and rob her little darling of his title and estate. The boy she found in your castle could not be the sweet creature she left:--_he_ was beautiful and finely formed;--_this_ was ugly to a degree, robust, clumsy, and half an ideot.