"All very well: but Miss Storey had always more partiality for our people than for the Preventive men. Poor father said,--one of the last jokes I have heard him make,--that he saw nothing for it but Miss Elizabeth taking to drinking or smoking, as she is so partial to smuggling and all that sort of thing, and as she must now get what she used to have so in other ways." "But gloves come over against the law still, do not they?" "Very few, high as the duty is. They are not sought after as they were a while ago, for they say the English gloves are nearly as good and as cheap now, and there are many more made. They say at the Custom-house that near twice as many skins come into the country as there were a few years ago; and so there is no occasion to smuggle so many French." "So Miss Storey does not go down to the poor people's cottages as she used to do, my son told me, stealing out of sight of the guard?" "Not she. She walks quite disconsolate along the beach to the east, instead of going in and out, above and below, among the downs, as she used to do when she had something to go out for." "And the Lieutenant's lady too; does she go out as formerly?" "As much as ever; but then she has something to do that makes it worth while. She gets one of the Preventive people to carry a little light table and her portfolio; and she paints,--never minding the wind or the sun, or anything. If it blows much, she pins her paper down at the corners, and puts her hair back, and paints away: and if the sun is hot, up goes her large umbrella, and still she paints away." "Dear me! What does she paint? I wonder whether she ever painted my poor son." "I think she hardly began after her marriage till the spring weather came on, and----" "Ah! it was March when he came by his end. The 3d of March, at half-past one in the morning, they tell me, ma'am." "The lady has painted a good many of the guard, though," continued Rebecca, wishing to change the subject. "She has a number of pictures of them, some drawing water at the wells on the downs, or sitting polishing their arms in the martello towers, or feeding their pigs at the station-house. We used to hear strangers call those towers very ugly things; but she has made a world of pretty pictures of them, looking as different as if they were not the same places." "She must be a clever lady, then; for there is nothing to my mind so dull and uniform as those towers. They are worse than the houses I saw last year in the Regent's Park,--all alike, except such little differences as don't signify."