Miss Stanbury at this time was known all through Exeter to be very much altered from the Miss Stanbury of old or even from the Miss Stanbury of two years since. The Miss Stanbury of old was a stalwart lady who would play her rubber of whist five nights a week, and could hold her own in conversation against the best woman in Exeter, not to speak of her acknowledged superiority over every man in that city. Now she cared little for the glories of debate; and though she still liked her rubber, and could wake herself up to the old fire in the detection of a revoke or the claim for a second trick, her rubbers were few and far between, and she would leave her own house on an evening only when all circumstances were favourable, and with many precautions against wind and water. Some said that she was becoming old, and that she was going out like the snuff of a candle. But Sir Peter Mancrudy declared that she might live for the next fifteen years, if she would only think so herself. ‘It was true,’ Sir Peter said, ‘that in the winter she had been ill, and that there had been danger as to her throat during the east winds of the spring, but those dangers had passed away, and, if she would only exert herself, she might be almost as good a woman as ever she had been.’ Sir Peter was not a man of many words, or given to talk frequently of his patients; but it was clearly Sir Peter’s opinion that Miss Stanbury’s mind was ill at ease. She had become discontented with life, and therefore it was that she cared no longer for the combat of tongues, and had become cold even towards the card-table. It was so in truth; and yet perhaps the lives of few men or women had been more innocent, and few had struggled harder to be just in their dealings and generous in their thoughts.

There was ever present to her mind an idea of failure and a fear lest she had been mistaken in her views throughout her life. No one had ever been more devoted to peculiar opinions, or more strong in the use of language for their expression; and she was so far true to herself, that she would never seem to retreat from the position she had taken. She would still scorn the new fangles of the world around her, and speak of the changes which she saw as all tending to evil. But, through it all, there was an idea present to herself that it could not be God’s intention that things should really change for the worse, and that the fault must be in her, because she had been unable to move as others had moved. She would sit thinking of the circumstances of her own life and tell herself that with her everything had failed. She had loved, but had quarrelled with her lover; and her love had come to nothing but barren wealth. She had fought for her wealth and had conquered, and had become hard in the fight, and was conscious of her own hardness. In the early days of her riches and power she had taken her nephew by the hand, and had thrown him away from her because he would not dress himself in her mirror. She had believed herself to be right, and would not, even now, tell herself that she had been wrong; but there were doubts, and qualms of conscience, and an uneasiness because her life had been a failure. Now she was seeking to appease her self-accusations by sacrificing everything for the happiness of her niece and her chosen hero; but as she went on with the work she felt that all would be in vain, unless she could sweep herself altogether from off the scene. She had told herself that if she could bring Brooke to Exeter, his prospects would be made infinitely brighter than they would be in London, and that she in her last days would not be left utterly alone. But as the prospect of her future life came nearer to her, she saw, or thought that she saw, that there was still failure before her. Young people would not want an old woman in the house with them even though the old woman would declare that she would be no more in the house than a tame cat. And she knew herself also too well to believe that she could make herself a tame cat in the home that had so long been subject to her dominion. Would it not be better that she should go away somewhere and die?

‘If Mr Brooke is to come here,’ Martha said to her one day, ‘we ought to begin and make the changes, ma’am’.

‘What changes? You are always wanting to make changes’.

‘If they was never made till I wanted them they’d never be made, ma’am. But if there is to be a married couple, there should be things proper. Anyways, ma’am, we ought to know oughtn’t we?’

The truth of this statement was so evident that Miss Stanbury could not contradict it. But she had not even yet made up her mind. Ideas were running through her head which she knew to be very wild, but of which she could not divest herself. ‘Martha,’ she said after a while, ‘I think I shall go away from this myself.’

‘Leave the house, ma’am?’ said Martha, awestruck.

‘There are other houses in the world, I suppose, in which an old woman can live and die.’

‘There is houses, ma’am, of course,’

‘And what is the difference between one and another?’

‘I wouldn’t do it, ma’am, if I was you. I wouldn’t do it if it was ever so. Sure the house is big enough for Mr Brooke and Miss Dorothy along with you. I wouldn’t go and make such change as that, I wouldn’t indeed, ma’am.’ Martha spoke out almost with eloquence, so much expression was there in her face. Miss Stanbury said nothing mo............