After a little previous talk about a certain great personage, [The personage was Lord Brougham, who at this time was too formidable for the poor girl to venture to write his name at length even in a private journal.] I asked Tom when the present coolness between them began.

He said: 'Nothing could exceed my respect and admiration for him in early days.

I saw at that time private letters in which he spoke highly of my articles, and of me as the most rising man of the time.

After a while, however, I began to remark that he became extremely cold to me, hardly ever spoke to me on circuit, and treated me with marked slight.

If I were talking to a man, if he wished to speak to him on politics or anything else that was not in any sense a private matter, he always drew him away from me instead of addressing us both.