He said to his niece, after having lived a long time with her, that he did not know whether she were more at her ease in the whirlpool of pleasures and fêtes, in the perplexity of politics or in the most profound solitude. Sometimes, in fact, Lady Hester went into Society eagerly and carried into the world her extraordinary brilliancy, her satire, humour and her biting wit, feared almost as much as the strokes of Gilray's pencil. Sometimes, she shut herself up with her uncle, serving him as secretary, astonishing him by the correctness of her judgment, by the comprehension and knowledge of men which this child of twenty years possessed, and without which the finest gifts of the understanding are reduced to sterility and do not descend from the domain of pure ideas to that of reality. Sometimes, she fled to Walmer Castle; and there, occupying herself in causing trees to be planted, in designing gardens, she bathed in silence and meditation. But now the world, she was surfeited with it!... She had just experienced the fragility of its infatuations. Politics! She was henceforth outside everything, and she had to witness the triumph of Pitt's enemies, the forgetfulness of his services. This power of money would have been necessary in order to struggle against the coteries of the drawing-room, the personal enmities which she had created. And she had only the pension of £1200 granted her in accordance with Pitt's last wish. There remained retirement. For the conquered, retirement is unendurable in the places which were witnesses of their past successes, unless they are surrounded by dear friends whose presence consoles them and makes them forget. Lord Camelford, whom she had thought for a moment of marrying, had quarrelled with the Pitts over a matter of money; he had given his sister--which assuredly he had the right to do--an estate which Lord Chatham hoped to inherit. Sir John Moore had just been killed. She dreamed of far-off solitudes, and she thought of undertaking an expedition which would cover her name with glory and whose fame would reach England.