She called me "baby" until I was nearly six—for no other came to take my place. I heard the servants speak of me, and say what a great heiress I would be in the years to come, if my father had no sons; but I hardly understood, and cared still less.
As I grew older I worshipped my beautiful mother, she was so very kind to me. I always felt that she was so pleased to see me. She never gave me the impression that I was tiresome, or intruded on her. Sometimes her toilet would be finished before the dinner-bell rang, then she would come to the nursery and ask for me. We walked up and down the long picture gallery, where the dead, and gone Ladies Tayne looked at us from the walls. No face there was so fair as my mother's. She was more beautiful than a picture, with her golden hair and fair face, her sweeping dresses and trailing laces.
The tears rise even now, hot and bitter, to my eyes when I think of those happy hours—my intense pride in and devoted love for my mother. How lightly I held her hand, how I kissed her lovely trailing laces.
"Mamma," I said to her, one day, "it is just like coming to heaven when you call me to walk with you."
"You will know a better heaven some day," she said, laughingly; "but I have not known it yet."
What was there she did not do? She sang until the music seemed to float round the room; she drew and painted, and she danced. I have seen no one like her. They said she was like an angel in the house; so young, so fair, so sweet—so young, yet, in her wise, sweet way, a mother and friend to the whole household. Even the maids, when they had done anything wrong and feared the housekeeper, would ask my mother to intercede for them.
If she saw a servant who had been crying, she did not rest until she knew the cause of the tears. If it were a sick mother, then money and wine would be dispatched. I have heard since that even if their love affairs went wrong, it was always "my lady" who set them right, and many a happy marriage took place from Tayne Abbey.
It was just the same with the poor on the estate; she was a friend to each one, man, woman or child. Her face was like a sunbeam in the cottages, yet she was by no means unwise or indiscriminate in her charities. When the people had employment she gave nothing but kind words; where they were industrious, and could not get work, she helped them liberally; where they were idle, and would not work, "my lady" lectured with grave sweetness that was enough to convert the most hardened sinner.
Every one sought her in distress, her loving sweetness of disposition was so well known. Great ladies came from London sometimes, looking world-worn and weary, longing for comfort and sympathy. She gave it so sweetly, no wonder they had desired it.
It was the same thing on our own estate. If husband and wife quarreled, it was to my mother they appealed—if a child seemed inclined to go wrong, the mother at once came to her for advice.