This refusal to live with her niece had been lightly borne, for Mrs. Ochiltree was a woman of strong individuality, whose comments upon her acquaintance, present or absent, were marked by a frankness at times no less than startling.  This characteristic caused her to be more or less avoided.  Mrs. Ochiltree was aware of this sentiment on the part of her acquaintance, and rather exulted in it.  She hated fools.  Only fools ran away from her, and that because they were afraid she would expose their folly.  If most people were fools, it was no fault of hers, and she was not obliged to indulge them by pretending to believe that they knew anything.  She had once owned considerable property, but was reticent about her affairs, and told no one how much she was worth, though it was supposed that she had considerable ready money, besides her house and some other real estate.  Mrs. Carteret was her nearest living relative, though her grand-nephew Tom Delamere had been a great favorite with her.  If she did not spare him her tongue-lashings, it was nevertheless expected in the family that she would leave him something handsome in her will.

Mrs. Ochiltree had shared in the general rejoicing upon the advent of the Carteret baby.  She had been one of his godmothers, and had hinted at certain intentions held by her concerning him.  During Mammy Jane’s administration she had tried the old nurse’s patience more or less by her dictatorial interference.  Since her partial confinement to the house, she had gone, when her health and the weather would permit, to see the child, and at other times had insisted that it be sent to her in charge of the nurse at least every other day.

Mrs. Ochiltree’s faculties had shared insensibly in the decline of her health.  This weakness manifested itself by fits of absent-mindedness, in which she would seemingly lose connection with the present, and live over again, in imagination, the earlier years of her life.  She had buried two husbands, had tried in vain to secure a third, and had never borne any children.  Long ago she had petrified into a character which nothing under heaven could change, and which, if death is to take us as it finds us, and the future life to keep us as it takes us, promised anything but eternal felicity to those with whom she might associate after this life.  Tom Delamere had been heard to say, profanely, that if his Aunt Polly went to heaven, he would let his mansion in the skies on a long lease, at a low figure.

When the carriage drove up with Mrs. Carteret, her aunt was seated on the little front piazza, with her wrinkled hands folded in her lap, dozing the afternoon away in fitful slumber.

“Tie the horse, William,” said Mrs. Carteret, “and then go in and wake Aunt Polly, and tell her I want her to come and drive with me.”

Mrs. Ochiltree had not observed her niece’s approach, nor did she look up when William drew near.  Her eyes were closed, and she would let her head sink slowly forward, recovering it now and then with a spasmodic jerk.