of
hilarity not calculated to inspire much respect amongst his retainers.
He had, however, sufficient self-command invariably to select as his
partner the prettiest maidservant in his establishment. But if the
baronet failed in his dignity as head of the house, her ladyship had
enough for both. She looked like a queen as she sailed in, amongst her
own domestics and all the retainers and hangers-on for miles round. On
the evening in question it amused me much to see the admiration,
almost the adoration, she elicited from old and young. No wonder: that
stately form, that queenly brow, had been bent over many a sick-bed;
those deep, thrilling tones had spoken words of comfort to many a
humble sufferer; that white hand was ever ready to aid, ever open to
relieve; good or bad, none ever applied to Lady Scapegrace in vain.

"The virtuous it is pleasant to relieve and make friends of," she has
often said to me in her moments of confidence; "the wicked it is a
duty to assist and to pity. Who should feel for them, Kate, if I
didn't? God knows I have been wicked enough myself."

The men-servants never took their eyes off her, and I fear made but
sorry partners to the buxom lasses of the household till "my lady" had
left the room. I saw two stable-boys, evidently fresh arrivals, who
seemed perfectly transfixed with admiration, as at an apparition such
as they had never pictured to themselves in their dreams; and one
rough fellow, a sort of under-keeper in velveteen, with the frame of a
Hercules and a fist that could have stunned an ox, having gazed at her
open-mouthed for about ten minutes without winking an eyelash, struck
his hand against his thigh, and exclaimed aloud to his own
inexpressible relief, though utterly unconscious of anything but the
presence which so overpowered him,--

"Noa, dashed if ever I _did_!"

This was soon after "my lady" had sailed into the servants' hall at
the head of her guests. It was the custom of the place for all the
"fashionables" and smart people who were actually in the house to
attend the servants' ball, most of us only staying long enough to set
the thing going with spirit, though I believe some of the young
dandies who found partners to their liking remained to the end, and
"kept it up" till daylight. Down we all went, as soon as the gentlemen
had finished their wine and discussed their coffee in the
drawing-room, down we went, through stone passages and long
underground galleries into