Gibbon seems to have been at times somewhat
difficult to satisfy as regards the security of her interests. It was
only prudent on her part. But it is easy to see what a source of
alienation and quarrel was here ready prepared, if both parties had
not risen superior to sordid motives. There never seems to have been
the smallest cloud between them. When one of his properties was sold
he writes: "Mrs. Gibbon's jointure is secured on the Buriton estate,
and her legal consent is requisite for the sale. Again and again I
must repeat my hope that she is perfectly satisfied, and that the
close of her life may not be embittered by suspicion, fear, or
discontent. What new security does she prefer--the funds, a mortgage,
or your land? At all events, she must be made easy." So Gibbon left
town and lay at Reading on his road to Bath: here he passed about ten
days with his step-mother, who was now nearly eighty years of age. "In
mind and conversation she is just the same as twenty years ago," he
writes to Lord Sheffield; "she has spirits, appetite, legs, and eyes,
and talks of living till ninety. I can say from my heart, Amen.
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