by the wayside)
barking at her heels, she scoured the country in all directions, and
came back to dinner, as she herself expressed it, "with the manners of
an Amazon, the complexion of a dairy-maid, and the appetite of a wolf."

On days when incessant rain kept her indoors, she amused herself with a
new freak. Making friends everywhere, as became The Queen of Hearts,
she even ingratiated herself with the sour old housekeeper, who had
predicted so obstinately that she was certain to run away. To the
amazement of everybody in the house, she spent hours in the kitchen,
learning to make puddings and pies, and trying all sorts of recipes
with very varying success, from an antiquated cookery book which she
had discovered at the back of my bookshelves. At other times, when I
expected her to be upstairs, languidly examining her finery, and idly
polishing her trinkets, I heard of her in the stables, feeding the
rabbits, and talking to the raven, or found her in the conservatory,
fumigating the plants, and half suffocating the gardener, who was trying
to moderate her enthusiasm in the production of smoke.

Instead of finding amusement, as we had expected, in Owen's studio, she
puckered up her pretty face in grimaces of disgust at the smell of paint
in the room, and declared that the horrors of the Earthquake at Lisbon
made her feel hysterical. Instead of showing a total want of interest
in my business occupations on the estate, she destroyed my dignity
as steward by joining me in my rounds on her pony, with her vagabond
retinue at her heels. Instead of devouring the novels I had ordered
for her, she left them in the box, and put her feet on it when she felt
sleepy after a hard day's riding. Instead of practicing for hours every
evening at the piano, which I had hired with such a firm conviction of
her using it, she showed us tricks on the cards, taught us new games,
initiated us into the mystics of dominoes, challenged us with riddles,
an even attempted to stimulate us into acting charades--in short, tried
every evening amusement in the whole category except the amusement of
music. Every new aspect of her character was a new surprise to us, and
every fresh occupation that she chose was a fresh contradiction to
our previous expectations. The value of experience as a guide is
unquestionable in many of the most important affairs of life; but,
speaking for myself personally, I never understood the utter futility of
it, where a woma