mehow that plan fell through, and
there they were with all the dirt out of the onion-field upon them; but
once when I thought of cleaning them with soap and water, at any rate,
she bade me not to do so, for it was Roman dirt--earth, I think, she
called it--but it was dirt all the same.

Then, in this bureau, were many other things, the value of which I could
understand--locks of hair carefully ticketed, which my lady looked at
very sadly; and lockets and bracelets with miniatures in them,--very
small pictures to what they make now-a-days, and called miniatures: some
of them had even to be looked at through a microscope before you could
see the individual expression of the faces, or how beautifully they were
painted. I don't think that looking at these made may lady seem so
melancholy, as the seeing and touching of the hair did. But, to be sure,
the hair was, as it were, a part of some beloved body which she might
never touch and caress again, but which lay beneath the turf, all faded
and disfigured, except perhaps the very hair, from which the lock she
held had been dissevered; whereas the pictures were but pictures after
all--likenesses, but not the very things themselves. This is only my own
conjecture, mind. My lady rarely spoke out her feelings. For, to begin
with, she was of rank: and I have heard her say that people of rank do
not talk about their feelings except to their equals, and even to them
they conceal them, except upon rare occasions. Secondly,--and this is my
own reflection,--she was an only child and an heiress; and as such was
more apt to think than to talk, as all well-brought-up heiresses must be.
I think. Thirdly, she had long been a widow, without any companion of
her own age with whom it would have been natural for her to refer to old
associations, past pleasures, or mutual sorrows. Mrs. Medlicott came
nearest to her as a companion of this sort; and her ladyship talked more
to Mrs. Medlicott, in a kind of familiar way, than she did to all the
rest of the household put together. But Mrs. Medlicott was silent by
nature, and did not reply at any great length. Adams, indeed, was the
only one who spoke much to Lady Ludlow.

After we had worked away about an hour at the bureau, her ladyship said
we had done enough for one day; and as the time was come for her
afternoon ride, she left me, with a volume of engravings from Mr.
Hogarth's pictures on one side of me (I don't like to write down the
n