Page:Lady Anne Granard, or Keeping up Appearances Volume 2.pdf/5

Rh ), told a rustic hearer, "a conscience was an expensive thing," so do those children of toil, when poorly paid and scantily fed, refuse to bear hard words and black looks into the bargain. "Siwility is vot's the due o’ sarwants, ven two quarters is gone by, an the colour o'yer money's unseen, 'specially vith so many cold wittles as ve has, and nothink but swipes," had been said or sung in the ears of Lady Anne, "many a time and oft;" and such was its effect that she knew and felt her daughters alone, the unchartered helots which Nature had given her, "to have and to hold," by a bond (which could never be cancelled until marriage had bound them by the still stronger chain which Death and Sin can alone unloose), must be the exclusive recipients of her ill-humour in trifles, her despotism in essentials. That Lady Anne had assumed her rights, and proved her power to break her victim, mentally, on the rack, or consign her to the stake, was so evinced by the appearance of Helen (though much the lesser sufferer, as the lesser delinquent), that Louisa fully concurred in the resolution her husband evinced to go down to Rotheles Castle, and obtain from the Earl some relief to the prisoners, leaving it to his lordship's judgment to provide, or, at least, to suggest the means. He held it to be a service of great delicacy, for, whatever might be the demerits of Lady Anne, he neither desired that a shilling should be withdrawn from her income, nor her daughters removed from her