She had horses and carriages to
suit herself; she sent to the great city for everything she wanted in
the way of dress. Even her diamonds--and the young man knew something
about these gems--must be of considerable value; and yet she wore
them carelessly, as it pleased her fancy. She had precious old laces,
too, almost worth their weight in diamonds,--laces which had been
snatched from altars in ancient Spanish cathedrals during the wars,
and which it would not be safe to leave a duchess alone with for ten
minutes. The old house was fat with the deposits of rich generations
which had gone before. The famous "golden" fireset was a purchase of
one of the family who had been in France during the Revolution, and
must have come from a princely palace, if not from one of the royal
residences. As for silver, the iron closet which had been made in the
dining-room wall was running over with it: tea-kettles, coffee-pots,
heavy-lidded tankards, chafing-dishes, punch-bowls, all that all the
Dudleys had ever used, from the caudle-cup that used to be handed
round the young mother's chamber, and the porringer from which
children scooped their bread-and-milk with spoons as solid as ingots,
to that ominous vessel, on the upper shelf, far back in the dark,
with a spout like a slender italic S, out of which the sick and
dying, all along the last century, and since, had taken the last
drops that passed their lips.
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