How Thérèse sang as she watered her lady’s plants, that day! How many confessions had she to pour forth to her old priest of feelings in which he traced incipient envy and jealousy, but in which she acknowledged only fear and dislike! How long a letter did she write to her father to inform him of her promotion to Mrs. Philips’s place, and consequent increase of salary;—of her intention to take a few lessons in hair-dressing, now that she could afford it, and felt it to be due to her mistress; and how happy she should be, when this duty to madame was provided for, to send money enough to put Annette to school, and perhaps even to place a new hot-bed at her father’s disposal!—How charming a variety was made in the household by a passing visit from the earl! And how pleased he looked when, on popping his head in at the library-door, late one evening, he found Letitia acting as secretary to her husband, looking over books, making notes, and preparing materials for a reply to a deputation which was to wait on him the next morning. “I hope you like hard work as well as you thought you should,” said he, laughing. “Have you begun to think yet of petitioning for a more equal division of it,—for a multiplication of places?” “Heaven forbid!” exclaimed Letitia. “A multiplication of places now, when there is such an outcry against places and placemen! It would be as much as our lives are worth.” “And, what is more to the purpose,” said lord F——, “it is unnecessary. It matters little that it is the fashion to mix up in ignorant minds the odium of holding a sinecure, and the honour of filling a laborious office;—it matters little that all the people have not yet learned to distinguish the caterpillars from the silk-worms of the state; for they will soon learn to hold the servants of the nation in due honour. Meanwhile, all that we want is a more equal distribution of the toils of government.” “All that we want, son! It is much to want. What an absurdity it seems that a nobleman should, from having merely his private affairs to manage, be suddenly burdened with the responsibilities of an empire;—a burden, under which how many have been crushed! Again, there is your old school-fellow, lord H——, yawning half the day on the pier at Brighton, and airing his horses the other half, while you are sitting here, pen in hand, from morning till night.” “I have no objection to it, sir. It has been a serious grievance to me, ever since I returned from my travels, that I had nothing better to do than what I have been doing.” “Studying, growing accomplished, falling in love, and marrying,” replied the earl, laughing. “What would you have been doing more?” “As it happens, sir, all this proves an excellent preparation for my present business. But I did not know that it would; and I was perpetually asking myself,—moreover, Letitia was perpetually asking me,—the end and aim of my employments.”