Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/94

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Memoirs of

of Buckingham bought of him: so there was at least as much as he sent me.

"If I had not been thwarted and opposed by them all, as I have been, and obliged to raise money from time to time to get on, I should have been a very rich woman. There was the money I sold out of the American funds; then there was the Burton Pynsent money, £7,000; my father's legacy, £10,000; the (I did not distinctly hear what) legacy, £1,000:" and thus her ladyship reckoned up on her fingers an amount of £40,000.

"Is it not very odd that General G. and Lord G. could not leave me a few thousand pounds out of their vast fortunes when they died? They knew that I was in debt, and that a few thousands would have set me up; and yet in their wills, not to speak of their lifetime, they never gave me a single sixpence, but left their money to people already in the enjoyment of incomes far exceeding their wants, and very little more nearly related to them than I am. Well, all their injustice does not put me out of spirits. The time will soon come when I shall want none of their assistance, if I get the other property that ought to come to me. Oh! how vexed Lady Chatham always was, when Lady Louisa V. used to point at me, and say—'There she is—that's my heir.' Lady L. was deformed, and never thought of marrying; but