Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/235

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Lady Hester Stanhope.
221

me to talk; I can't fatigue myself by giving them information about the country, and be a Pococke: and, as for giving them good advice, the world is so turned topsy-turvy, that everything one says is lost on everybody. Then, as for being of any use to me, they could be of none: if I wanted anything, they don't know where it is; and how are they to tell the nasty wretches, who only speak Arabic? Besides, I am not sure their nijems would suit me; and then they would do me more harm than good. Poor little Eugenia! I had thought that I might derive some consolation from looking on her innocent face whilst she sat working at my bedside; but some one told me her star perhaps would not agree with mine: is it so, doctor? I am like Mr. Pitt: he used to say, 'I hear that man's footsteps in the passage—I can't bear it; do send him away to town, or to Putney:' so it is with me. There was my grandfather, too—how he felt the effect of the peculiar star of those people who did not suit him!— he could bear nobody near him, when he was ill, but Lady Chatham, and an old woman who had been a sort of woman of the town: he sent all his children to Lyme Regis; and even his tutor, Mr. Wilson, he could not bear. I know the reason of it now, from my recollection of them, but I did not at the time. My grandfather was born