to say, she had all manner of teachers, first in England and then abroad, during the couple of years before the birth of her child; and by this instruction Arabella profited so notably that her language made no glaring contrast with that of the civilised world, and her mind seemed if anything more acute, more circumspective, than women’s generally in the sphere to which she was now admitted.  Sir Spencer and Lady Ogram did not love her; they made no pretence of doing so; and it may be feared that the lives of both were shortened by chagrin and humiliation.  At the age of thirty or so, Quentin succeeded to the baronetcy.  In the same year his son died.  No other offspring had blessed, or was to bless, the romantic union.

Behold Arabella, erst of Camden Town, installed as mistress of a house in Mayfair and reigning over Rivenoak.  Inevitably, legends were rife about her; where the exact truth was not known, people believed worse.  Her circle of society was but a narrow one; but for two classes of well-dressed people, the unscrupulous snobs and the cheerily indifferent, her drawing-room would have been painfully bare.  Some families knew her because Sir Quentin was one of the richest men in his county; certain persons accepted her invitations because she was not exactly like other hostesses, and could talk in rather an amusing way.  The years went on; scandal lost its verdure; Lady Ogram was accepted as a queer woman with a queer history, a rather vulgar eccentric, whose caprices and enterprises afforded agreeable matter for gossip.  No one had ever ventured to assail her post-matrimonial reputation; she was fiercely virtuous, and would hold no terms with any woman not wholly above reproach.  It had to be admitted that she bore herself with increasing dignity; moreover, that she showed a disposition to use her means and influence for what are called good ends.  Towards the year 1870 the name of Lady Ogram began to be mentioned with respect.

Then her husband died.  Sir Quentin had doubtless fallen short of entire happiness; before middle-age he was a taciturn, washed-out sort of man, with a look of timid anxiety.  Perchance he regretted the visions of his youth, the dreams of glory in marble.  When he became master of Rivenoak, and gave up his London house, Arabella wished him to destroy all his sculpture, that no evidence might remain of the relations which had at first existed between them, no visible relic of the time which she refused to remember.  Sir Quentin pleaded against this condemnation, and obtained a compromise.  The fine bust, and a few other of his best things, were to be transferred to Rivenoak, and there kept under lock and key.  Often had the baronet felt that he would like to look at the achievements of his hopeful time, but he never summoned courage to mount to the attic.  His years went by in a mouldering inactivity.  Once or twice he escaped alone to the Continent, and wandered for weeks about the Italian sculpture-galleries, living in the sunny, ardent past; he came back nerve-shaken and low in health.  His death was sudden—­ ‘failure of the heart’s action,’ said doctors, in their indisputable phrase—­and Lady Ogram shut herself up for a time that she might not have the trouble of grieving before witnesses.