, having had a life-long feud
about a copy-hold furze brake of nearly three-quarters of an acre, as
Betsy remembered to have heard her master say.

To go on, however, with what Mrs. Price was saying. She knew scarcely
any thing about my father, because she was too young at that time to
be called into the counsels of the servants' hall, for she scarcely was
thirty-five yet, as she declared, and she certainly did not look forty.
But all about the present Lord Castlewood she knew better than any body
else, perhaps, because she had been in the service of his wife, and,
indeed, her chief attendant. Then, having spoken of her master's wife,
Mrs. Price caught herself up, and thenceforth called her only his
"lady."

Mr. Herbert Castlewood, who had minded his business for so many years,
and kept himself aloof from ladies, spending all his leisure in good
literature, at this time of life and in this state of health (for the
shock he had received struck inward), fell into an accident tenfold
worse--the fatal accident of love. And this malady raged the more
powerfully with him on account of breaking out so late in life. In one
of the picture-galleries at Florence, or some such place, Mrs. Price
declared, he met with a lady who made all the pictures look cold and
dull and dead to him. A lovely young creature she must have been (as
even Mrs. Price, who detested her, acknowledged), and to the eyes of a
learned but not keen man as good as lovely. My father was gone to look
after me, and fetch me out of England, but even if he had been there,
perhaps he scarcely could have stopped it; for this Mr. Castlewood,
although so quiet, had the family fault of tenacity.

Mrs. Price, being a very steady person, with a limited income, and
enough to do, was inclined to look down upon the state of mind in which
Mr. Castlewood became involved. She was not there at the moment, of
course, but suddenly sent for when all was settled; nevertheless, she
found out afterward how it began from her master's man, through what he
had for dinner. And in the kitchen-garden at Castlewood no rampion
would she allow while she lived. I asked her whether she had no pity, no
sympathy, no fine feeling, and how she could have become Mrs. Price if
she never had known such sentiments. But she said that they only called
her "Mistress" on account of her authority, and she never had been drawn
to the opposite sex, though many times asked in marriage. And what she
had seen o