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328 her to live here still, and direct the affairs of the house for me; because, in the first place, I hoped we should spend the greater part of the year in Town, and in the second place, being so young and inexperienced, I was frightened at the idea of having a houseful of servants to manage, and dinners to order, and parties to entertain, and all the rest of it, and I thought she might assist me with her experience; never dreaming that she would prove a usurper, a tyrant, an incubus, a spy, and everything else that's detestable. I wish she was dead!"

She then turned to give her orders to the footman who had been standing bolt upright within the door for the last half minute, and had heard the latter part of her animadversions, and, of course, made his own reflections upon them, notwithstanding the inflexible, wooden countenance he thought proper to preserve in the drawing-room.

On my remarking afterwards that he must have heard her, she replied,

"Oh, no matter! I never care about the footmen; they're mere automatons—it's nothing to them what their superiors say or do; they won't dare to repeat it; and as to what they think—if they presume to think at all—