the interest became due, or whenever my
lady stinted herself of any personal expense, such as Mr. Horner thought
was only decorous and becoming in the heiress of the Hanburys. Her
carriages were old and cumbrous, wanting all the improvements which had
been adopted by those of her rank throughout the county. Mr. Horner
would fain have had the ordering of a new coach. The carriage-horses,
too, were getting past their work; yet all the promising colts bred on
the estate were sold for ready money; and so on. My lord, her son, was
ambassador at some foreign place; and very proud we all were of his glory
and dignity; but I fancy it cost money, and my lady would have lived on
bread and water sooner than have called upon him to help her in paying
off the mortgage, although he was the one who was to benefit by it in the
end.

Mr. Horner was a very faithful steward, and very respectful to my lady;
although sometimes, I thought she was sharper to him than to any one
else; perhaps because she knew that, although he never said anything, he
disapproved of the Hanburys being made to pay for the Earl Ludlow's
estates and state.

The late lord had been a sailor, and had been as extravagant in his
habits as most sailors are, I am told,--for I never saw the sea; and yet
he had a long sight to his own interests; but whatever he was, my lady
loved him and his memory, with about as fond and proud a love as ever
wife gave husband, I should think.

For a part of his life Mr. Horner, who was born on the Hanbury property,
had been a clerk to an attorney in Birmingham; and these few years had
given him a kind of worldly wisdom, which, though always exerted for her
benefit, was antipathetic to her ladyship, who thought that some of her
steward's maxims savoured of trade and commerce. I fancy that if it had
been possible, she would have preferred a return to the primitive system,
of living on the produce of the land, and exchanging the surplus for such
articles as were needed, without the intervention of money.

But Mr. Horner was bitten with new-fangled notions, as she would say,
though his new-fangled notions were what folk at the present day would
think sadly behindhand; and some of Mr. Gray's ideas fell on Mr. Horner's
mind like sparks on tow, though they started from two different points.
Mr. Horner wanted to make every man useful and active in this world, and
to direct as much activity and usefulness as possible to the improvement
o