My Uncle William, Lord Hatherley, was Lord High Chancellor at this time, and we were a good deal at his house, both at "functions" and privately. His great {39} friend, Dean Stanley, was very kind to me; Dean Hook came, too, and many other Churchmen were continually in and out in their train. My cousin, William Stephens, who afterwards became Dean of Winchester, was then a very good-looking and agreeable young man; he followed my uncle about like a shadow, and my uncle and Aunt Charlotte were devoted to him. But my uncle gathered other society than that of Churchmen about him, and it amused me to watch for the pick of the intellectual world of the day as they swarmed up and down the stairs at the receptions, with the necessary make-weight of people who follow and pose in the wake of the great. Willie insisted upon his wife being perfectly gowned on these occasions, and as he so often got out of going to those functions and insisted on my going alone, certain other relations of Lord Hatherley's would hover round me with their spiteful remarks of: "Dear Katie, alone again I poor dear girl, where does he go? How odd that you are so often alone--how little you know!" I was fond of my old uncle and he of me, but these little amenities did not make me like these social functions better, especially as his wife, my Aunt Charlotte, had a most irritating habit of shutting her eyes when greeting me, and, with her head slightly to one side, saying, "Poor dear! Poor lovely lamb!" This winter, following the birth of my second girl, was bitterly cold, and my health, which had not been good for some time before her birth, caused much anxiety. After a consultation between Sir William Gull, Sir William Jenner, and my usual doctor, it was decided that we should go to Niton, Isle of Wight, as I was too weak to travel far. My dear old aunt, Mrs. Benjamin Wood, sent her own doctor to me, and he recommended me to inject opium--an {40} expression of opinion that horrified Sir William Jenner into saying, "That man's mad, or wants to get rid of you!" Our pecuniary affairs were again causing us considerable anxiety, but my dear aunt played the fairy godmother once more, and sent Willie a cheque so that we could go to Niton without worry or anxiety, and stop there until my health should be re-established. We were delighted with the summer warmth of the sun, and spent a happy Christmas basking in it. Since the hotel was very expensive, Willie established me in lodgings with the children and nurses in Ventnor, and, finding the place decidedly dull, returned to London.