The whole world, in a modest sense, would he hers to choose from.  While she had no definite notion as to the amount of her legacy, she had understood that it would bring in sufficient income to keep her from the necessity of seeking further employment.  Probably something between two and three hundred pounds a year.  She had always longed to travel.  Italy, France, Germany, Spain, she would see them all.  One could live very reasonably in really good pensions abroad, she had been told.

And then, some day, after a few years of happy wandering, she might adventure to that far-off Canada where her only brother was living the life of a frontiersman on an incredibly huge farm.  She had not seen him for many years, but her heart warmed at the thought of seeing her only relative again.  He was much older.  Yes, Eddie must now be about forty.  Oh, all of that.  She, herself, was almost twenty-eight.  But she wouldn’t go to him for several years.  He had done one thing which seemed to her quite dreadful.  He had made an unfortunate marriage with a woman far beneath him socially.  Men were so weak!  Because they fancied themselves lonely, or even captivated by a pretty face, they were willing to make impossible marriages.  Women were different.  Still, she had the grace to blush when she recalled the episode of the doctor’s assistant.

Yes, she would go out to Eddie after his wife had had the chance to form herself a little more.  Living with a husband so much superior was bound to have its influence.  And she must have some really good qualities at bottom or she could never have attracted him.  There was nothing vicious about her brother.  She must write him of Miss Wickham’s death.  They were neither of them fond of writing.  It must be nearly a year since she had heard from him last.  And then, it was so difficult to keep up a correspondence when people had no mutual friends and so little in common.

A glance at her watch told her that it must be nearly time for the London Wickhams to arrive.  It would be better not to see them, unless they sent for her, until after they had returned from the cemetery.  They were just the sort of people to think that she was forgetting her position if she had the manner of playing hostess by receiving them.  Thank goodness! she would probably never see them again after to-day.

With a word to Kate that she would presently have her luncheon in her room and then rest for a few hours until the people returned after the funeral, she made her way to her own bare little room.  How cold and bare it was!  With the exception of the framed pictures of her father and mother and a small photograph of Eddie, taken before he had gone out, there was nothing but the absolutely necessary furniture.  Miss Wickham’s ideas of what a ‘companion’s’ room should be like had partaken of the austere.  And all the rest of the house was so crowded and overloaded with things.  The drawing-room had always been an eyesore to Nora, crammed as it was with little tables and cabinets containing china.  And in every available space there were porcelain ornaments and photographs in huge silver frames.  It was all like a badly arranged museum or a huddled little curio shop.  Well, she would soon be done with that, too!