She dressed elegantly; she had a piano and much grand furniture brought over the hills to Sandal; and she filled the old house during the summer with lords and ladies, and poets and artists, who flitted about the idyllic little village, like gay butterflies in a lovely garden.
The husband and children of such a woman were not likely to stand still.
Sandal, encouraged by her political influence, went into Parliament.

Her children did fairly well; for though one boy was wild, and cost them a deal of money, and another went away in a passion one morning, and never came back, the heir was a good son, and the two girls made splendid marriages.

On the whole, she could feel that she had done well to her generation.

Even after she had been long dead, the old women in the village talked of her beauty and spirit, of the tight hand she kept over every one and every thing pertaining to Sandal.

Of all the mistresses of the old "seat," this Mistress Charlotte was the most prominent and the best remembered.
Every one who steps within the wide, cool hall of Seat-Sandal faces first of all things her picture.