“You figure to yourself that both are extremely engrossing, and so numerous that I have not many moments to spare, even for the most sacred of duties. Of employments, yes, these are indeed plentiful, and recur day by day. Would you like to know what they are? At seven every morning my coffee is brought by an English maid, who stares at me open-mouthed while I drink it, and wonders I do not prefer to breakfast like herself, directly I am up, on salt beef and small beer. She has not learned any of my dresses by name; and when she fastens my hair, her hands tremble so, that it all comes tumbling about my shoulders long before I can get downstairs. She is stupid, awkward, slow, but gentle, willing, and rather pretty. Somehow I cannot help loving her, though I wish with all my heart she was a better maid. “If George has not already gone out on some sporting expedition—and he is passionately fond of such pursuits, perhaps because they relieve the monotony of married life, which, I fear, is inexpressibly tedious to men like him, who have been accustomed to constant excitement—I find him in the great hall eating as if he were famished, and in a prodigious hurry to be off. I fill him his cup of claret with my own hands, for my darling says he can only drink wine in the morning when I pour it out for him myself; and before I have time to ask a single question he is in the saddle and gallops off. Mamma, I never _have_ time to ask him any questions. I suppose men are always so busy. I sometimes think I too should like to have been a man. Perhaps, then, this large, dark, over-furnished house would not look so gloomy when he is gone. “Perhaps, too, the housekeeper would not tell me such long stories about what they did in the time when Barbara, Lady Hamilton, reigned here. By all accounts she must have been an ogress, with a mania for accumulating linen. You will laugh at me, dear mamma—you who never feared the face of any human being—but I am a little afraid of this good Dame Diaper, and so glad when our interview is over. I wish I had more courage. George must think me such a coward, he who is so brave. I heard him say the other day that the finest sight he ever saw in his life was the _beautiful Marquise_ (meaning you, mamma) at bay. I asked him if he did not see poor frightened me at a sad disadvantage? and he answered by—No, I won’t tell you how he answered. Ah! dear mother, I always wished to be like you from the time I was a little girl. Every day now I wish it more and more. After my release from Dame Diaper I go to the garden and look at my Provence roses—there are seven buds to flower yet; and the autumn here, though finer than I expected, is much colder than in France. Then I walk out and visit my poor. I wish I could understand their _patois_ better, but I am improving day by day.