Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/197

 was in, and returned to her bed-room, where she gave a loose to her sorrow.

My presence being announced, I was admitted. "Doctor," said she, "to-night in my father's house there used to be a hundred tenants and servants sitting down to a good dinner, and dancing and making merry. I see their happy faces now before my eyes: and, when I think of that and how I am surrounded here, it is too much for me. When you left me this morning, things of former times came over my mind, and I could not bear to sit here, so I went out to break the chain of my thoughts. I would have gone into the garden, if it had not rained."

I endeavoured to say something consolatory to her. "Everybody," she continued, "is unkind to me. I have sought to do good to everybody, either by relieving their distresses or purifying their morals, and I get no thanks for my pains. I sometimes make reproaches to myself for having spent my money on worthless beings, and think it might have been better otherwise; but God knows best. I had hoped to find some persons whose minds might have been enlightened, and who would have felt the importance of what I tell them. But you even, of whom I had some hope, are as bad as the rest; and, if you assent to the truth of what I say, you make so many hums