But, it will be said, Clara Amedroz could have rebelled; and Clara’s father was hardly made of such stuff that obedience to the aunt would be enforced on her by parental authority.  Doubtless Clara could have rebelled against her aunt.  Indeed, I do not know that she had hitherto been very obedient.  But there were family facts about these Winterfield connexions which would have made it difficult for her to ignore her so-called aunt, even had she wished to do so.  Mrs Winterfield had twelve hundred a year at her own disposal, and she was the only person related to the Amedroz family from whom Mr Amedroz had a right to have expectations on his daughter’s behalf.  Clara had, in a measure, been claimed by the lady, and the father had made good the lady’s claim, and Clara had acknowledged that a portion of her life was due to the demands of Perivale.  These demands had undoubtedly made her life serious.

Life at Perivale was a very serious thing.  As regards amusement, ordinarily so called, the need of any such institution was not acknowledged at Prospect House.  Food, drink, and raiment were acknowledged to be necessary to humanity, and, in accordance with the rules of that house, they were supplied in plenty, and good of their kind.  Such ladies as Mrs Winterfield generally keep good tables, thinking no doubt that the eatables should do honour to the grace that is said for them.  And Mrs Winterfield herself always wore a thick black silk dress not rusty or dowdy with age but with some gloss of the silk on it; giving away, with secret, underhand, undiscovered charity, her old dresses to another lady of her own sort, on whom fortune had not bestowed twelve hundred a year.  And Mrs Winterfield kept a low, four-wheeled, one-horsed phaeton, in which she made her pilgrimages among the poor of Perivale, driven by the most solemn of stable-boys, dressed up in a great white coat, the most priggish of hats, and white cotton gloves.  At the rate of five miles an hour was she driven about, and this driving was to her the amusement of life.  But such an occupation to Clara Amedroz assisted to make life serious.

In person Mrs Winterfield was tall and thin, wearing on her brow thin braids of false hair.  She had suffered much from acute ill health, and her jaws were sunken, and her eyes were hollow, and there was a look of woe about her which seemed ever to be telling of her own sorrows in this world and of the sorrows of others in the world to come.  Ill-nature was written on her face, but in this her face was a false face.  She had the manners of a cross, peevish woman; but her manners also were false, and gave no proper idea of her character.  But still, such as she was, she made life very serious to those who were called upon to dwell with her.