—­Byron.

The life of Berenice was lonely enough.  She had perseveringly rejected the visits of her neighbors, until at length they had taken her at her word and kept away from her house.

She had persistently declined the invitations of Mrs. Brudenell to join the family circle at Washington every winter, until at last that lady had ceased to repeat them and had also discontinued her visits to Brudenell Hall.

Berenice passed her time in hoping and praying for her husband’s return, and in preparing and adorning her home for his reception; in training and improving the negroes; in visiting and relieving the poor; and in walking to the turnstile and watching the high-road.

Surely a more harmless and beneficent life could not be led by woman; yet the poisonous alchemy of detraction turned all her good deeds into evil ones.

Poor Berenice—­poor in love, was rich in gold, and she lavished it with an unsparing hand on the improvement of Brudenell.  She did not feel at liberty to pull down and build up, else had the time-worn old mansion house disappeared from sight and a new and elegant villa had reared its walls upon Brudenell Heights.  But she did everything else she could to enhance the beauty and value of the estate.

The house was thoroughly repaired, refurnished, and decorated with great luxury, richness, and splendor.  The grounds were laid out, planted, and adorned with all the beauty that taste, wealth, and skill could produce.  Orchards and vineyards were set out.  Conservatories and pineries were erected.  The negroes’ squalid log-huts were replaced with neat stone cottages, and the shabby wooden fences by substantial stone walls.

And all this was done, not for herself, but for her husband, and her constant mental inquiry was: 

“After all, will Herman be pleased?”

Yet when the neighbors saw this general renovation, of the estate, which could not have been accomplished without considerable expenditure of time, money, and labor, they shook their heads in strong disapprobation, and predicted that that woman’s extravagance would bring Herman Brudenell to beggary yet.

She sought to raise the condition of the negroes, not only by giving them neat cottages, but by comfortably furnishing their rooms, and encouraging them to keep their little houses and gardens in order, rewarding them for neatness and industry, and established a school for their children to learn to read and write.  But the negroes—­hereditary servants of the Brudenells—­looked upon this stranger with jealous distrust, as an interloping foreigner who had, by some means or other, managed to dispossess and drive away the rightful family from the old place.  And so they regarded all her favors as a species of bribery, and thanked her for none of them.  And this was really not ingratitude, but fidelity.  The neighbors denounced these well-meant efforts of the mistress as dangerous innovations, incendiarisms, and so forth, and thanked Heaven that the Brudenell negroes were too faithful to be led away by her!