Lord Chudleigh paid me no compliments and wrote me no verses, nor did he often join in our train upon the Terrace. But he distinguished us by frequently paying a visit to our lodgings in the morning, when he would sit and read, or talk, and sometimes share our simple dinner. "We who belong to the great City houses," said Mrs. Esther after one of these visits, "are accustomed from infancy to familiarity with Nobility. My father, when Worshipful Master of the Scourers' Company, or in his year of office as Lord Mayor, would sometimes have a peer on one side and a bishop on the other. Baronets and simple knights we hardly valued. Therefore these visits of his lordship, which are no doubt a great distinction for both of us, seem like a return of my childhood." We learned from Lord Chudleigh that it was his intention (afterwards fully carried out) to take that active part in the administration of state affairs to which his exalted rank naturally called him. "I am ever of opinion," he said, "that a gentleman in this country owes it to his birth and position to do his utmost for the preservation of our liberties and the maintenance of sound government." And he once told us, to our astonishment, that had he lived in the days of Charles the First, he should have joined the party of the Parliament. It seemed to me, who watched him narrowly and with trembling, that he was desirous, in these visits, to find out what manner of person I was, and whether I possessed any virtues, to illustrate that external comeliness which had already taken his fancy. Alas! I thought continually with shame of the time when I should have to throw myself at his feet and implore his mercy and forgiveness. Then he encouraged me to talk about my childhood and my father, taking pleasure, I thought, in the contemplation of a life given up to heaven and learning, and smiling at the picture of Lady Levett, who ruled us all, the two boys who came home to tease the girls, and little Nancy, so fond and so pretty. I wondered then that he should care to hear about the way I lived, the books I read, the death of my honoured father, and the little things which make up a country maid's life, wherein the ripples and the gentle breezes are as important to her as great storms and gales to men and women of the world. I know, now, that when a man loves a girl there is nothing concerned with her that he does not want to know, so that her image may be present to him from the beginning, and that he may feel that there has been no year of her life, no action of hers at all, that he does not know, with what she thought, what she did, who were her friends, and what she was like. Thus he told me about his own country house, which was a very fine place indeed, and his gardens, stables, library, pictures, and all the splendid things which he had inherited. Two things we hid from each other, the one that I was the girl whom he had married: the other, that he was already married.