filling duties, while my lady paid and kept their substitutes. Mr.
Smithson made a calculation, and would have saved some hundreds a year by
pensioning off these old servants. But my lady would not hear of it.
Then, again, I know privately that he urged her to allow some of us to
return to our homes. Bitterly we should have regretted the separation
from Lady Ludlow; but we would have gone back gladly, had we known at the
time that her circumstances required it: but she would not listen to the
proposal for a moment.

"If I cannot act justly towards every one, I will give up a plan which
has been a source of much satisfaction; at least, I will not carry it out
to such an extent in future. But to these young ladies, who do me the
favour to live with me at present, I stand pledged. I cannot go back
from my word, Mr. Smithson. We had better talk no more of this."

As she spoke, she entered the room where I lay. She and Mr. Smithson
were coming for some papers contained in the bureau. They did not know I
was there, and Mr. Smithson started a little when he saw me, as he must
have been aware that I had overheard something. But my lady did not
change a muscle of her face. All the world might overhear her kind,
just, pure sayings, and she had no fear of their misconstruction. She
came up to me, and kissed me on the forehead, and then went to search for
the required papers.

"I rode over the Connington farms yesterday, my lady. I must say I was
quite grieved to see the condition they are in; all the land that is not
waste is utterly exhausted with working successive white crops. Not a
pinch of manure laid on the ground for years. I must say that a greater
contrast could never have been presented than that between Harding's farm
and the next fields--fences in perfect order, rotation crops, sheep
eating down the turnips on the waste lands--everything that could be
desired."

"Whose farm is that?" asked my lady.

"Why, I am sorry to say, it was on none of your ladyship's that I saw
such good methods adopted. I hoped it was, I stopped my horse to
inquire. A queer-looking man, sitting on his horse like a tailor,
watching his men with a couple of the sharpest eyes I ever saw, and
dropping his h's at every word, answered my question, and told me it was
his. I could not go on asking him who he was; but I fell into
conversation with him, and I gathered that he had earned some money in
trade in Birmingham, and had bou