“You are to teach her all your tambour and knotting stitches, work up her mess of ‘pretty work,’ as she calls it, help her with her plain work and housekeeping, walk with her, and be company for her in the evening, since she is lonesome when her brother is abroad. She does not feel dull in the country during the summer, because since the family fell in the world, they have been in the habit of giving quarters to friends and letting the spare rooms in their house; but these are only wanted for the long days and the fine weather, and Miss Kingscote cannot ‘a-bear’ the thought of a winter all alone with Master Charles, out at Nutfield. The salary is a guinea a month, with board and washing provided. I can tell you many a duchess does not give her children’s governess a third more, but I would not take a shilling less for you. Will you engage, Miss Barlowe?” “I will, madam, till I can make a better of it,” answered Lady Bell, not very meekly. Mrs. Siddons did not censure her young friend’s peevishness and ambition; on the contrary, she told Lady Bell seriously that it was the first duty of every well-disposed, sensible young woman, to do what she could to better her condition in the world, and even to prove a prop and ladder by which those belonging to her might stay themselves, and climb to a higher estate. Lady Bell was passed on to Nutfield without delay. Her dignity was put perforce in her pocket, since she travelled neither by berlin, nor landau, not even by a yellow post-chaise, but by a convenient waggon. The short ride carried Lady Bell through an undulating country, the abounding wood and water of which must have rendered it, in the season, an Arcadia to the lovers of nature of the period, who were neither more nor less than landscape gardeners. In spite of Miss Kingscote’s dislike to being out at Nutfield without the solace and sympathy of another “female” of her rank, to share her dearth of activity, and her “nerves and twitters” in winter, the neighbourhood was not lonely or thinly peopled. There was even evidence of the rising appreciation of its Arcadian character. Not only was the adjacent country town decidedly aristocratic in its buildings, there were one or two attempts in its suburbs at fancy cottages and lodges—gothic and sylvan,—with grounds in keeping, modest modifications of renowned Strawberry Hill. To these the townspeople and denizens of greater towns, sometimes even of London itself, retired, and came, on occasions, to enjoy rural felicity and life in _villigiatura_, when they recorded innocently, to their poetic and philosophic credit, that they were, of their own free will, burying themselves for months at a time in the depth of the country, and the romantic solitude of the wilds.