ABSTRACT
The description which Mrs. Wansford gave Althea of her future abode was not very flattering. – ‘Ah! my dear young lady,’ said she with a deep sigh, ‘You who have always lived in so much comfort, and had all so pretty and genteel about you with your dear aunt, will find it, I am afraid, a sad hardship to live at such a place as Eastwoodleigh is now. To be sure in times past it was a house of great note, and they say that the greatest Lords in all that country did not afford such good house-keeping as there was at it; but, to my thinking, all that makes the dismal state it is now in, a great deal more sad – and indeed, dear Miss Althea, if I and my poor Wansford had not met with such losses in the world as he has done, so that we had no home for ourselves and our children – besides being so dependent on Sir Audley’s good favour – we should have been very sorry indeed to have gone to such a place –’
