Walls, leaving him at Dene Folly; and here she stayed till Sir John was taken with his last illness and sent for her.  He sent for her, not to make up the quarrel, but to jibe and sneer at her, and to make her wait on him day and night, as if she were a paid nurse from a hospital.  While this was going on, and after Sir John had been quite given up by the doctors, news came from India of Master Charles’s death.  Well, her ladyship went nigh distracted; but as for the baronet, it was said, though I won’t vouch for the truth of it, that he only laughed when the news was told him, and said that if he was plagued as much with corns in the next world as he had been in this, he should find Master Charles’s arm very useful to lean upon.  Two days later he died, and the title, and Dene Folly with it, went to a far-away cousin, whom neither Sir John nor his wife had ever seen.  Then it was found how the baronet had contrived that his spite should outlive him—­for only out of spite and mean cruelty could he have made such a will as he did make:  that Deepley Walls should not become her ladyship’s absolute property till the end of twenty years, during the whole of which time his body was to remain unburied, and to be kept under the same roof with his widow, wherever she might live.  The mean, paltry scoundrel!  Perhaps her ladyship might have had the will set aside, but she would not go to law about it.  Thank Heaven! the twenty years are nearly at an end.  Deepley Walls has been a haunted house ever since that midnight when Sir John was borne in on the shoulders of six strong men.  And now tell me whether her ladyship is not a woman to be pitied.”

* * * * *

At a quarter before eleven next morning, Mr. Solomon Madgin, Lady Chillington’s agent and general man-of-business, arrived by appointment at Deepley Walls.  Mr. Madgin was indispensable to her ladyship, who had a considerable quantity of house property in and around Eastbury, consisting chiefly of small tenements, the rents of which had to be collected weekly.  Then Mr. Madgin was bailiff for the Deepley Walls estate, in connection with which were several small farms or “holdings” which required to be well looked after in many ways.  Besides all this, her ladyship, having a few spare thousands, had taken of late years to dabbling in scrip and shares in a small way, and under the skilful pilotage of Mr. Madgin had hitherto contrived to steer clear of those rocks and shoals of speculation on which so many gallant argosies are wrecked.  In short, everything except the law-business of the estate filtered through Mr. Madgin’s hands, and as he did his work cheaply and well, and put up with her ladyship’s ill-temper without a murmur, the mistress of Deepley Walls could hardly have found anyone who would have suited her better.