In like manner her ladyship might have done her part towards the dilapidation of their property. She might have spent a year’s income in a single entertainment:--she might have sent her jewels to the pawnbroker’s to pay her gambling-debts:--she might have forgotten the names and number of her children:--she might have been so superbly ignorant as not to know whether the kitchen was at the top of the house or at the bottom:--she might have played as many mad pranks as others in high life have done; but she coveted not that species of notoriety which arises from violating the principles of decorum and common sense. The life of this truly respectable couple was not however indebted for its respectability merely to the absence of vice and folly. They cultivated positive as well as negative virtues. When they went into the country, it was for some better purpose than to be stared at; and when they resided in town, they did not convert their house into a place of public amusement. The tenants in the country knew of their landlord’s presence there because they saw him not only in the field, but in their houses; and he saw that his steward neither oppressed the tenants, nor defrauded his master; and the poor people in the cottages saw him, and the labourers too could tell him their grievances, if they had any. Lady Martindale was also actively benevolent,--not merely giving away a periodical lot of advertised blankets, or a few bushels of coals to such as would take the trouble to fetch them; but she knew to whom her benevolence was directed, and considered rather what the poor had need to receive than what might best suit her to bestow. There was the same activity of benevolence when they were in town; and it was regulated there also by the same principle of propriety, not of convenience or fashion. There was, however, in Lord Martindale one fault, and that in his son was almost a virtue, in consequence of its accompaniments--he had a great share of pride. He never spoke to or conversed with any of his inferiors, but that his style always proclaimed him a man of rank and consequence. We much doubt if, in the days when angels visited the sons of men, these heavenly visitants behaved with much more stately reserve than did Lord Martindale in his walks and visits of benevolence; or whether they showed so great a sense of their superior nature as he did of his superior rank. In this respect Lady Martindale had the advantage of his lordship. Nobody could help noticing her very graceful and dignified deportment; but the most humble never felt humiliation in her presence.