ven his own personal affairs were not in the order in
which they had been a year or two before, for his old clerk had gradually
become superannuated, or, at any rate, unable by the superfluity of his
own energy and wit to supply the spirit that was wanting in Mr. Horner.

Day after day Mr. Smithson seemed to grow more fidgety, more annoyed at
the state of affairs. Like every one else employed by Lady Ludlow, as
far as I could learn, he had an hereditary tie to the Hanbury family. As
long as the Smithsons had been lawyers, they had been lawyers to the
Hanburys; always coming in on all great family occasions, and better able
to understand the characters, and connect the links of what had once been
a large and scattered family, than any individual thereof had ever been.

As long as a man was at the head of the Hanburys, the lawyers had simply
acted as servants, and had only given their advice when it was required.
But they had assumed a different position on the memorable occasion of
the mortgage: they had remonstrated against it. My lady had resented
this remonstrance, and a slight, unspoken coolness had existed between
her and the father of this Mr. Smithson ever since.

I was very sorry for my lady. Mr. Smithson was inclined to blame Mr.
Horner for the disorderly state in which he found some of the outlying
farms, and for the deficiencies in the annual payment of rents. Mr.
Smithson had too much good feeling to put this blame into words; but my
lady's quick instinct led her to reply to a thought, the existence of
which she perceived; and she quietly told the truth, and explained how
she had interfered repeatedly to prevent Mr. Horner from taking certain
desirable steps, which were discordant to her hereditary sense of right
and wrong between landlord and tenant. She also spoke of the want of
ready money as a misfortune that could be remedied, by more economical
personal expenditure on her own part; by which individual saving, it was
possible that a reduction of fifty pounds a year might have been
accomplished. But as soon as Mr. Smithson touched on larger economies,
such as either affected the welfare of others, or the honour and standing
of the great House of Hanbury, she was inflexible. Her establishment
consisted of somewhere about forty servants, of whom nearly as many as
twenty were unable to perform their work properly, and yet would have
been hurt if they had been dismissed; so they had the credit of
ful