The husband and children of such a woman were not likely to stand still.  Sandal, encouraged by her political influence, went into Parliament.  Her children did fairly well; for though one boy was wild, and cost them a deal of money, and another went away in a passion one morning, and never came back, the heir was a good son, and the two girls made splendid marriages.  On the whole, she could feel that she had done well to her generation.  Even after she had been long dead, the old women in the village talked of her beauty and spirit, of the tight hand she kept over every one and every thing pertaining to Sandal.  Of all the mistresses of the old “seat,” this Mistress Charlotte was the most prominent and the best remembered.

Every one who steps within the wide, cool hall of Seat-Sandal faces first of all things her picture.  It is a life-size painting of a beautiful woman, in the queer, scant costume of the regency.  She wears a white satin frock and white satin slippers, and carries in her hand a bunch of white roses.  She appears to be coming down a flight of wide stairs; one foot is lifted for the descent, and the dark background, and the dim light in which it hangs, give to the illusion an almost startling reality.  It was her fancy to have the painting hung there to welcome all who entered her doors; and though it is now old-fashioned, and rather shabby and faded, no one of the present generation cares to order its removal.  All hold quietly to the opinion that “grandmother would not like it.”

In that quiet acre on the hillside, which holds the generations of the Sandals, she had been at rest for ten years.  But her son still bared his gray head whenever he passed her picture; still, at times, stood a minute before it, and said with tender respect, “I salute thee, mother.”  And in her granddaughter’s lives still she interfered; for she had left in their father’s charge a sum of money, which was to be used solely to give them some pleasure which they could not have without it.  In this way, though dead, she kept herself a part of their young lives; became a kind of fairy grandmother, who gave them only delightful things, and her name continued a household word.

Only the mother seemed averse to speak it; and Charlotte, who was most observant, noticed that she never lifted her eyes to the picture as she passed it.  There were reasons for these things which the children did not understand.  They had been too young at her death to estimate the bondage in which she had kept her daughter-in-law, who, for her husband’s sake, had been ever patient and reticent.  Nothing is, indeed, more remarkable than the patience of wives under this particular trial.  They may be restive under many far less wrongs, but they bear the mother-in-law grievance with a dignity which shames the grim joking and the petulant abuse of men towards the same relationship.  And for many years the young wife had borne nobly a domestic tyranny which pressed her on every hand.  If then, she was glad to be set free from it, the feeling was too natural to be severely blamed; for she never said so,—­no, not even by a look.  Her children had the benefit of their grandmother’s kindness, and she was too honorable to deprive the dead of their meed of gratitude.