Grand kitchen gardens are expensive, and Lizzie had at
once been firm in reducing the under-gardeners from five men to one and a
boy. The head gardener had of course left her at once; but that had not
broken her heart, and she had hired a modest man at a guinea a week
instead of a scientific artist, who was by no means modest, with a hundred
and twenty pounds a year, and coals, house, milk, and all other
horticultural luxuries. Though Lizzie was prosperous and had a fine
income, she was already aware that she could not keep up a town and
country establishment and be a rich woman on four thousand a year. There
was a flower garden and small shrubbery within the so-called moat; but,
otherwise, the grounds of Portray Castle were not alluring. The place was
sombre, exposed, and in winter very cold; and except that the expanse of
sea beneath the hill on which stood the castle was fine and open, it had
no great claim to praise on the score of scenery. Behind the castle, and
away from the sea, the low mountains belonging to the estate stretched for
some eight or ten miles; and toward the further end of them, where stood a
shooting-lodge, called always The Cottage, the landscape became rough and
grand.
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