She examined the line of my
features very attentively, and told me the result, which, however,
I mean to keep hidden.
One favoured subject of discourse was that of "race," upon which
she was very diffuse, and yet rather mysterious. She set great
value upon the ancient French {20} (not Norman blood, for that she
vilified), but did not at all appreciate that which we call in this
country "an old family." She had a vast idea of the Cornish miners
on account of their race, and said, if she chose, she could give me
the means of rousing them to the most tremendous enthusiasm.
Such are the topics on which the lady mainly conversed, but very
often she would descend to more worldly chat, and then she was no
longer the prophetess, but the sort of woman that you sometimes
see, I am told, in London drawing-rooms--cool, decisive in manner,
unsparing of enemies, full of audacious fun, and saying the
downright things that the sheepish society around her is afraid to
utter. I am told that Lady Hester was in her youth a capital
mimic, and she showed me that not all the queenly dulness to which
she had condemned herself, not all her fasting and solitude, had
destroyed this terrible power.
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