Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/166

 and doing nothing that is useful to mankind, I must be frank, and tell them of it. You are in darkness, and I have done my best to enlighten you: if I have not succeeded, it is not my fault. As for pleasing or displeasing me, put that out of your head: there is no more in that than in pleasing or displeasing that door. I am but a worm—a poor, miserable being—an humble instrument in the hands of God. But, if a man is benighted, and sees a light in a castle, does he go to it, or does he not? Perhaps it may be a good genius that guides him there, perhaps it may be a den of thieves: but there he goes."

In this mournful strain Lady Hester went on for some time. Every thing around me presented so affecting a picture, that, unable to restrain my emotions, I burst into tears. She let me recover myself, and then, making me drink a finjàn of coffee, with a little orange-flower water in it, to restore my spirits, she advised me to go and take a walk.

An hour or two afterwards I saw her again. She was much better, and was sitting up in her bed, cutting out articles of clothing, and fixing on patterns for new gowns for her maids. "I hate money," she said, "and could wash to have nothing to do with it but saying, 'Take this, and lay it out so and so.'" Ever sanguine, she was forming plans of what she should do in the spring, when she purposed remodelling her