Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/143

 Rh a gliding stream to the gentleness of her temper" (so much might at a pinch be said about any of us); but we find Miss Carter writing to Mrs. Montagu in this perplexing strain:—

"I fancy our Sylph has not yet left the coral groves and submarine palaces in which she would meet with so many of her fellow nymphs on her way to England. I think if she had landed, we should have had some information about it, either from herself or from somebody else who knows her consequence to us."

The poor Sylph seems to have had rather a hard time of it after the death of the Honourable Agmondesham, who relished his wife's vagaries so little, or feared them so much, that he left the bulk of his estate to his nephew, a respectable young man with no unearthly qualities. The heir, however, behaved generously to his widowed aunt, giving her an income large enough to permit her to live with comfort, and to keep her coach. Miss Carter was decidedly of the opinion that Mr. Vesey made such a "detestable" will because he was lacking in sound religious principles, and she expressed in plain terms her displeasure with