What had she left behind her which was worthy of regrets? Two sisters with whom she had never been in the least intimate, an insignificant brother, an old maniac father, altogether mad and democrat besides, which is the worst of mental aberrations. Singular old fellow truly, who slept, _in winter_, with wide-open windows! Lady Hester reviewed the sad days of her neglected childhood. Her stepmother was an insipid creature, without interest in anything, who divided her time--Oh! in a very equal way--between her toilet-table and her box at the Opera. And during this time, Lord Stanhope hurried from his iron hand-press to his factory for making artificial tiles to exclude the snow and the rain, sprang to his reckoning-machine, from there rushed to his dockyard, where a steamboat was always on the look-out and always refused to move, entered, on the way, the Old Jewry, where some members of the Revolution Society were ready to submit to a speech, and drew up in return a motion to be brought forward in the House of Lords in order to prevent England from interfering in the internal government of France!... One childish recollection haunted Lady Hester until she was tired. The scene? A London street transformed into a sea of mud by an unusually mild winter. The personages? A little girl perched on enormous stilts and very much at her ease up there, to be sure! An old gentleman, tall and spare, leaning out of a window, using forcible language and gesticulating. The little girl went up to the first floor. Earl Stanhope was in a good temper that morning; after having dispersed his gold and silver plate and his tapestries, which exhaled a too aristocratic mustiness, he had just sold off his horses and carriages. With his bare feet thrust into slippers, and wearing under his dressing-gown his beloved silk breeches which never left him day or night, he was contentedly munching the piece of brown bread which with him took the place of breakfast. "Well, little girl," was his greeting; "what is it that you want to say? On what devil had you climbed just now?" "Oh, papa! Since you have no more horses, I wanted to practise walking in the mud with stilts. Mud, you know, is all the same to me; it is that poor Lady Stanhope who will find it trying; she is accustomed to her carriage, and her health is not first-rate." "What is that you say, little girl? What would you say if I bought a carriage for Lady Stanhope?" "Well, papa, I should say that it is very amiable of you." "Well, well, we will see. But, by all the devils, no armorial bearings!" Hester revived the scene with a distinctness which distance strengthened. She recalled even the carriage which Lady Stanhope had owed to the famous stilts; for her astonishing memory, like that of her grandfather, Lord Chatham, forgot neither things, nor animals nor people.