Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/263

 the ides of March?" I told her. "I think," she continued, "the word Ides must be derived from âayd, عيد." I guessed at once what was passing in her mind. It was an illusion with her that her destiny and Cæsar's, or her character and his, had some resemblance: and, when she mentioned Brutus-wigs in her letter to Colonel Campbell, it had a reference to the stabs they were giving her from England in depriving her of her pension, and putting insults upon her.

She was deeply wounded in her pride by the treatment she had received from home. "The Queen," she would say, "should have desired her ministers to write to me, and say, 'It grieves me that you should have exceeded your income, and incurred debts, which you know, when complaints are made to me, I cannot countenance; endeavour to pay them by instalments, and all may yet be well,' or something to that effect—

But no! she shall have my pension, and, if they make me a bankrupt, why, let them pay the usurers themselves."

February 9.—I did not see Lady Hester the whole of the preceding day: she had sent me a message to say she did not wish to trouble me. I attributed this to the state of the weather; for the wind was high, the atmosphere wet and cold, and everything about the residence uncomfortable. To go from my house M 5