ly days of her widowhood, when Mrs. Coutts
gave her this moderate estimate of her "money matters:" "Ah, I assure
you, dear Mrs. Charles, the reports of what poor, dear Mr. Coutts has
left me are very much exaggerated--not, I really believe, more than a
few hundred thousand pounds. To be sure" (after a dejected pause),
"there's the bank--they say about fifty thousand a year."

This small fortune and inconsiderable income proved sufficient to the
moderate desires of the young Duke of St. Albans, who married this
destitute widow, who thenceforth took her place (and a large one) in the
British aristocracy, and chaperoned the young Ladies Beauclerc, her
husband's sisters, in society. She was a good-natured woman, and more
than once endeavored to get my father and mother to bring me to her
balls and magnificent parties. This, however, they steadily declined,
and she, without resenting it, sent her invitations to my youngest
brother alone, to whom she took a great fancy, and to whose accepting
her civilities no objection was made. At her death she left her great
wealth to Mr. Coutts's granddaughter, Miss Burdett Coutts, the lady
whose excellent use of her riches has made her known all over the world
as one of the most munificently charitable of Fortune's stewards.

The Duchess of St. Albans was not without shrewd sense and some humor,
though entirely without education, and her sallies were not always in
the best possible taste. Her box at Covent Garden could be approached
more conveniently by crossing the stage than by the entrance from the
front of the house, and she sometimes availed herself of this easier
exit to reach her carriage with less delay. One night when my father had
been acting Charles II., the Duchess of St. Albans crossing her old
work-ground, the stage, with her two companions, the pretty Ladies
Beauclerc, stopped to shake hands with him (he was still in his stage
costume, having remained behind the scenes to give some orders), and
presenting him to her young ladies, said, "There, my dears; there's your
ancestor." I suppose in her earlier day she might not have been a bad
representative of their "ancestress."]

_Monday, April 25th._--Finished studying Lady Teazle. In the
evening at the theater the house was good, but the audience was
dull and I was in wretched spirits and played very ill.

Dall was saying that she thought in two years of hard work we
might--that is, my father and my