Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/51

 them was some special privilege granted to her by the Sublime Porte on account of her exalted rank, and she probably found it to her advantage not to disturb this very convenient supposition.

On taking up our residence at Mar Elias, there were two bells put by in a closet, which were replaced for the use of my family, with bell-ropes to the saloon and dining-room, none of us ever suspecting that they could, by any human ingenuity, be considered otherwise than as most necessary appendages to a room: but we calculated without our host. This assumption of the dignity of bells was held to be an act of lsa majestas; and the report of our proceedings was carried from one person to another, until, at last, it reached Lady Hester's ears, endorsed with much wonder on the part of her maids how a doctor's wife could presume to set herself on an equality with a meleky (queen). Lady Hester, however, saw the absurdity of affecting any claim to distinction in such a matter, and, therefore, vexed and mortified although it appears she was, she never said a word to me on the subject. But, one morning in September, when we were all assembled at breakfast, on pulling the bell-rope no sound responded, and, examining into the cause, we discovered that the strings had been cut by a knife, and the bells forcibly wrenched from their places. Much conjecture was formed as to who could