und so
hard to part from when marriage took her away.

Many of the extracts from the diaries quoted in this chapter must be read
in the light of the reader's own recollections of the process of getting
used to life. They show that if Lady Russell afterwards attained a happy
confidence in action, she was not in youth without experience of
bewilderment and doubts about herself. Following one another quickly, these
extracts may seem to imply that she was gloomy and self-centred during
these years; but that was never the impression she made on others. Like
many at her age, when she wrote in a diary she dwelt most on the feelings
about which she found it hardest to talk. Her diary was not so much the
mirror of the days as they passed as the repository of her unspoken
confidences. "Looked over my journals, with reflections," she writes later;
"inclined to burn them all. It seems I have only written [on days] when I
was not happy, which is very wrong--as if I had forgotten to be grateful
for happy ones."

Mrs. Drummond, Lord John Russell's stepdaughter (who was then Miss Adelaide
Lister), has recorded, in a letter to Lady Agatha Russell, her
recollections of the Minto family at that time.

I think (she writes) my first visit to the Admiralty, where I was
invited to children's parties, must have been in the winter before
my mother's death. I have no distinct first impressions of the
grown-up part of the family, except perhaps of your grandmother,
Lady Minto. Although children exaggerate the age of their elders,
and seldom appreciate beauty except that of people near their own
age, I did realize her great good looks. She had very regular
features and a beautiful skin, with a soft rose-colour in her
cheeks. Her hair was brown, worn in loops standing out a little
from the face, and she always wore a cap or headdress of some kind.
Her manner was most kind and winning, and she had a pleasant voice.
I am sure she must have been very even-tempered; and as I recall
her image now, and the peace and serenity expressed in her
beautiful face, I think she must have had a happy life. I never saw
her otherwise than perfectly kind and gentle and quite unruffled by
the little contretemps, which must have befallen her as they do
others. With this gentleness there was something that made one feel
she was capable and reliable, that there was a latent strength on
which t