Yet she had no scruple in appropriating her future husband’s money to her own use, when it was decided that it was not to be employed as he intended.  What new articles she bought for herself, were all such as would make a show, and an impression upon the ladies of Hollingford.  She argued with herself that linen, and all underclothing, would never be seen, while she knew that every gown she had, would give rise to much discussion and would be counted up in the little town.

So her stock of underclothing was very small, and scarcely any of it new; but it was made of dainty material, and was finely mended up by her deft fingers, many a night long after her pupils were in bed; inwardly resolving all the time she sewed, that hereafter some one else should do her plain-work.  Indeed, many a little circumstance of former subjection to the will of others rose up before her during these quiet hours, as an endurance or a suffering never to occur again.  So apt are people to look forward to a different kind of life from that to which they have been accustomed, as being free from care and trial!  She recollected how, one time during this very summer at the Towers, after she was engaged to Mr. Gibson, when she had taken above an hour to arrange her hair in some new mode carefully studied from Mrs. Bradley’s fashion-book—­after all, when she came down, looking her very best, as she thought, and ready for her lover, Lady Cumnor had sent her back again to her room, just as if she had been a little child, to do her hair over again, and not to make such a figure of fun of herself!  Another time she had been sent to change her gown for one in her opinion far less becoming, but which suited Lady Cumnor’s taste better.  These were little things; but they were late samples of what in different shapes she had had to endure for many years; and her liking for Mr. Gibson grew in proportion to her sense of the evils from which he was going to serve as a means of escape.  After all, that interval of hope and plain-sewing, intermixed though it was by tuition, was not disagreeable.  Her wedding-dress was secure.  Her former pupils at the Towers were going to present her with that; they were to dress her from head to foot on the auspicious day.  Lord Cumnor, as has been said, had given her a hundred pounds for her trousseau, and had sent Mr. Preston a carte-blanche order for the wedding-breakfast in the old hall in Ashcombe Manor-house.  Lady Cumnor—­a little put out by the marriage not being deferred till her grandchildren’s Christmas holidays—­had nevertheless given Mrs. Kirkpatrick an excellent English-made watch and chain; more clumsy but more serviceable than the little foreign elegance that had hung at her side so long, and misled her so often.