Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/71

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Lady Hester Stanhope.
57

disinterestedness, for his life wasted in the service of his country!"—Here Lady Hester's emotions got the better of her, and she burst into tears: she sobbed as she spoke. "People little knew what he had to do. Up at eight in the morning, with people enough to see for a week, obliged to talk all the time he was at breakfast, and receiving first one, then another, until four o'clock; then eating a mutton-chop, hurrying off to the House, and there badgered and compelled to speak and waste his lungs until two or three in the morning!—who could stand it? After this, heated as he was, and having eaten nothing, in a manner of speaking, all day, he would sup with Dundas, Huskisson, Rose, Mr. Long, and such persons, and then go to bed to get three or four hours' sleep, and to renew the same thing the next day, and the next, and the next.

"Poor old Rose! he had a good heart. I am afraid he took it ill that I did not write to him. Mr. Long used to slide in and slide out, and slide here and slide there—nobody knew when he went or when he came—so quiet."

I here interrupted Lady Hester: "It was a lamentable end, that of Mr. ——," said I.[1] "So much the

  1. "I dislike———, both as to his principles and the turn of his understanding: he wants to make money by this peace."—Diaries and Correspondence, &c.