Some hours after the arrival of the company, old Mr. Clifton sat alone in his study, examining piles of accounts, merchants’, mechanics’, and hired laborers’ bills, that had come in as usual upon the first of July, many weeks before, yet had not, up to this night, been settled. For many years past the financial affairs of the Master of Clifton had been falling behindhand. The cause of this was that no plantation and plantation house can thoroughly succeed without the personal superintendence of an efficient _mistress_ to assist the master’s effort. Often, indeed, it happens, that while the master himself is engaged in state politics, or off at the legislature, or at congress, or on the circuit as a judge of the court, or in the metropolis of the state, or of the nation, holding some high office under the government—the mistress, at home upon the plantation, is the main-spring of all its business—superintending—not only the house and house-maids, with their multifarious cares and avocations, such as a city housewife cannot conceive of, but managing the plantation also—keeping the overseer to his duty, adjudging equitably all difficulties that may arise between him and the slaves under his charge—looking over all the numerous accounts, paying debts, and, when necessary, retrenching expenses. Now the Clifton plantation had been singularly unfortunate in a series of inefficient mistresses, even before it fell in regular succession to the present Mr. Clifton. And after that, affairs were worse than ever. His first wife, the haughty Miss Gower, the mother of Carolyn, was far too great a lady to look after a housekeeper and overseer, and her successors had been all young girls, very worthless, except as pets and playthings, and who had, besides, to be indulged every year with their winters in Richmond, or in Washington—a two-fold evil, as it took the master from his plantation and men, and the mistress from her house and maids, and laid them, besides, under the heavy expense of city hotel living, dressing, dinner-giving, theatres, balls, concerts, etc. Once in awhile, as a bridal treat, or at the successive “coming out” of daughters, a winter in the metropolis may be well enough. But when continued year after year, through a lifetime, to the total neglect of the plantation, the revenues of no ordinary estate will hold out. So it followed, that as the master and mistress ceased to look after the overseer and the housekeeper, the overseer and housekeeper ceased to look after the men and maids, and the men and maids grew careless and indolent in the performance of their duties. Thus, as the expenses rose, the income fell. And thus, at the present time, old Mr. Clifton was almost irredeemably in debt, and all the Clifton property, except the land, mortgaged to its full value. The mortgage might foreclose at any instant. And at this present moment, the poor old master of great Clifton had not the ready money to pay his harvest hands.