Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/32

 face, and put them, one by one, on the table, there is not a single one would bear examination. The only thing is that, put. together and lighted up, they look well enough. It is homogeneous ugliness, and nothing more.'

"Mr. Pitt used to say to me, 'Hester, what sort of a being are you? We shall see, some day, wings spring out of your shoulders; for there are moments when you hardly seem to walk the earth.' There was a man who had known me well for fifteen years, and he told me, one day, that he had tried a long time to make me out, but he did not know whether I was a devil or an angel. There have been men who have been intimate with me, and to whom, in point of passion, I was no more than that milk-jug" (pointing to one on the table); "and there have been others who would go through fire for me. But all this depends on the star of a person.

"Mr. Pitt declared that it was impossible for him to say whether I was most happy in the vortex of pleasure, in absolute solitude, or in the midst of politics; for he had seen me in all three; and, with all his penetration, he did not know where I seemed most at home. Bouverie used to say to me, when l lived at Chevening, 'I know you like this kind of life; it seems to suit you.' And so it did: but why did I quit home? Because of my brothers and sisters, and for my father's sake. I