My lord, the author of 'Pomaria Britannica' and 'The Elegant Art of Pomiculture as applied to Landscape Gardening,' was a quantity he could safely neglect.

Beyond his yew-walks and his orchards his lordship was a cipher.

He had proved too respectable even for the peerage; and of late had cheerfully resigned all his affairs into the hands of his wife, formerly the Lady Michal M'Intosh, a penniless beauty, with the pride of a Scotchwoman and the temper of a Hervey.

Her enemies said that my lady had tripped in the merry days of George the Second, and now made up for past easiness by present hardness.

Her friends--but it must be confessed her ladyship had no friends.
Be that as it might, Mr.Thomasson had refrained from summoning her to her son's bedside; partly because the surgeons had quickly pronounced the wound a trifle, much more because the little he had seen of her ladyship had left him no taste to see more.