I have never succeeded in making any one the least different from what they are and, in my efforts to do so, have lost every female friend that I have ever had (with the exception of four).  This was the true difference between us.  I have never influenced anybody but my own two children, Elizabeth and Anthony, but Laura had such an amazing effect upon men and women that for years after she died they told me that she had both changed and made their lives.  This is a tremendous saying.  When I die, people may turn up and try to make the world believe that I have influenced them and women may come forward whom I adored and who have quarrelled with me and pretend that they always loved me, but I wish to put it on record that they did not, or, if they did, their love is not my kind of love and I have no use for it.

The fact is that I am not touchy or impenitent myself and forget that others may be and I tell people the truth about themselves, while Laura made them feel it.  I do not think I should mind hearing from any one the naked truth about myself; and on the few occasions when it has happened to me, I have not been in the least offended.  My chief complaint is that so few love one enough, as one grows older, to say what they really think; nevertheless I have often wished that I had been born with Laura’s skill and tact in dealing with men and women.  In her short life she influenced more people than I have done in over twice as many years.  I have never influenced people even enough to make them change their stockings!  And I have never succeeded in persuading any young persons under my charge—­except my own two children—­to say that they were wrong or sorry, nor at this time of life do I expect to do so.

There was another difference between Laura and me:  she felt sad when she refused the men who proposed to her; I pitied no man who loved me.  I told Laura that both her lovers and mine had a very good chance of getting over it, as they invariably declared themselves too soon.  We were neither of us au fond very susceptible.  It was the custom of the house that men should be in love with us, but I can truly say that we gave quite as much as we received.

I said to Rowley Leigh [Footnote:  The Hon. Rowland Leigh, of Stoneleigh Abbey.]—­a friend of my brother Eddy’s and one of the first gentlemen that ever came to Glen—­when he begged me to go for a walk with him: 

“Certainly, if you won’t ask me to marry you.”

To which he replied: 

“I never thought of it!”

“That’s all right!” said I, putting my arm confidingly and gratefully through his.

He told me afterwards that he had been making up his mind and changing it for days as to how he should propose.