But she kept the family lawyers of the Trelawny house, I allow, in a state of fever and exasperation very prejudicial to the health of these respectable gentlemen. They thought her mad, no less, when she proposed to them to give large slices of her income to this one and the other--not “the poor,” in the ordinary sense of the word. Subscriptions to hospitals, to orphanages, to charities in general, that they understood; but a civil list of pensions like the Queen’s--sometimes more liberal than her Majesty is permitted to give! “The young woman is mad!” said Mr. Seign and Mr. Cachet. But it was in favour of Diana’s sanity that she had her dresses from Paris, and drove a beautiful pair of horses, and bought pictures, and saw a great deal of society. Her conservatories were the pride of the county; her head gardener a man of such erudition that professors quailed before him. This did not look like insanity; neither did the great Christmas party which gathered in the Chase, when Mr. Cachet was one of the guests, and was forced to acknowledge that things had not been carried on with anything like so much splendour in old Sir John’s time. She was not a hermit nor an anchorite nor a monomaniac. As for her resolution not to marry, of course that meant solely that she had not yet been addressed by the right man; and when he appeared, no doubt he would make short work with the civil list. This calmed the tone of Messrs. Seign & Cachet’s remonstrances. They protested on principle against any new “eccentricity” of the feminine Squire of Trelawny; but they trusted in time and the chapter of accidents, and Diana’s beauty and her youth--for naturally when she has a large property, however it may be under other circumstances, a woman of thirty has by no means ceased to be young.