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 CHAPTER XLV

THE LITTLE RIFT

From Lady Hamilton to Madame la Marquise de Montmirail. ",—

"You shall not again have cause to complain of my negligence in writing, nor to accuse me of forgetting my own dear mother, amongst all the new employments and dissipations of my English home.

"You figure to yourself that both are extremely engrossing, and so numerous that I have not many moments to spare, even for the most sacred of duties. Of employments, yes, these are indeed plentiful, and recur day by day. Would you like to know what they are? At seven every morning my coffee is brought by an English maid, who stares at me open-mouthed while I drink it, and wonders I do not prefer to breakfast like herself, directly I am up, on salt beef and small beer. She has not learned any of my dresses by name; and when she fastens my hair, her hands tremble so, that it all comes tumbling about my shoulders long before I can get downstairs. She is stupid, awkward, slow, but gentle, willing, and rather pretty. Somehow I cannot help loving her, though I wish with all my heart she was a better maid.

"If George has not already gone out on some sporting expedition—and he is passionately fond of such pursuits, perhaps because they relieve the monotony of married life, which, I fear, is inexpressibly tedious to men like him, who have been accustomed to constant excitement—I find him in the great hall eating as if he were famished, and in a prodigious hurry to be off. I fill him his cup of claret with