however, her activities were turned inward and she sought to atone for an education incomplete.  She had never gone to school, and her governesses, while able and sufficient, could not do for her what only school life can do.  This experience, though held needless and doubtful in many opinions, Estelle felt to miss and her conscience prompted her to go to London and mix with other people, while her inclination tempted her to stop with her father.  She went to London for two years and worked upon a woman’s newspaper.  Then she fell ill and came home and spent her time with Arthur Waldron, with Raymond Ironsyde, and with Ernest Churchouse.  A girl friend or two from London also came to visit her.

She recovered perfect health, and having contracted a great new worship for poetry in her convalescence, retained it afterwards.  Ernest was her ally, for he loved poetry—­an understanding denied to her other friends.  So Estelle passed through a period of dreaming, while her intellect grew larger and her human sympathy no less.  She had developed into a handsome woman with regular features, a large and almost stately presence and a direct, undraped manner not shadowed as yet by any ray of sex instinct.  Nature, with her many endowments, chose to withhold the feminine challenge.  She was as stark and pure as the moon.  Young men, drawn by her smile, fled from her self.  Her father’s friends regarded her much as he did:  with a sort of uneasy admiration.  The people were fond of her, and older women declared that she would never marry.

Of such was Miss Jenny Ironsyde.  “Estelle’s children will be good works,” she told Raymond.  For she and her nephew were friends again.  The steady tides of time had washed away her prophecy of eternal enmity, and increasing infirmity made her seek companionship where she could find it.  Moreover, she remembered a word that she had spoken to Raymond in the past, when she told him how a grudge entertained by one human being against another poisons character and ruins the steadfast outlook upon life.  She escaped that danger.

It is a quality of small minds rather than of great to remain unchanged.  They fossilise more quickly, are more concentrated, have a power to freeze into a mould and preserve it against the teeth of time, or the wit and wisdom of the world.  The result is ugly or beautiful, according to the emotion thus for ever embalmed.  The loves of such people are intuitive—­shared with instinct and above, or below, reason; their hate is similarly impenetrable—­preserved in a vacuum.  For only a vacuum can hold the sweet for ever untainted, or the bitter for ever unalloyed.  Mary Dinnett belonged to this order.  She was now dead, and concerning the legacy of her unchanging attitude more will presently appear.