The  baby  daughter  of  the  late  Earl  and  Countess
was  in  her  own  right  Countess  of  Sutherland  and
heiress  of  the  great  Sutherland  estates.  She  was
the  joint  charge  of  Lady  Glenorchy  and  Lady
Alva.  She  grew  up  and  married  the  Marquis  of
Stafford,  and  through  him,  on  his  creation  as
Duke  of  Sutherland,  acquired  the  title  of  Duchess,
in  addition  to  the  inherited  Countess.  She  was
the  Duchess- Countess  of  Sutherland — a  much
respected  power  in  the  North,  living  to  an
honourable  old  age.
It  was  at  Taymouth  that  Lady  Glenorchy  began
the  diary  of  her  soul's  welfare,  which  she  did  not
even  write  in  an  ordinary  room,  but  in  the  closet
in  the  Castle  sacred  to  prayer,  or  in  that  other
retreat  in  the  grounds  to  which  she  resorted  for  the

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THE  COUNTESS  OF  HUNTINGDON

same  purpose.  The  diary  hardly  contains  a  direct
word  or  allusion  to  the  ordinary  events  of  the  family.
Indeed,  with  only  two  exceptions,  there  is  not  an
incident  given  with  mundane  details.  The  one
incident  is  quoted  in  the  first  page,  when  she
bemoans  her  loss  of  temper  in  an  argument  on
faith  indulged  in  with  Auchalladair,  the  agent  of
Lord  Breadalbane,  and  the  familiar  friend  of  the
house.     The  second  incident  occurred  later.
The  journal — the  entries  in  which  end  generally
with  a  prayer — is  a  record  of  the  Lord's  dealings
with  the  spirit  He  had  created,  and  that  spirit's
obedience  or  resistance — whether  the  light  of  God's
countenance  had  shone  on  the  inner  woman,  or
whether  with  that  light  withdrawn  for  her  offences,
there  were  only  darkness  and  deadness,  danger
and  tribulation.
