“I am sure she would feel herself degraded by marrying him.”

“I trust she will never live to feel herself degraded.  I do not believe that she could do anything that she thought would degrade her.  But I think that you and I had better leave her to herself in this matter.”  Further on in the same evening, or rather late in the night,—­for they had then sat talking together for hours over the fire,—­she made a direct statement to him.  “When I die, Reg, I have but 5,000 pounds to leave behind me, and this I have divided between you and her.  I shall not tell her because I might do more harm than good.  But you may know.”

“That would make no difference to me,” he said.

“Very likely not, but I wish you to know it.  What troubles me is that she will have to pay so much out of it for legacy duty.  I might leave it all to you and you could give it her.”  An honester or more religious or better woman than old Lady Ushant there was not in Cheltenham, but it never crossed her conscience that it would be wrong to cheat the revenue.  It may be doubted whether any woman has ever been brought to such honesty as that.

On the next morning Morton went away without saying another word in private to Mary Masters and she was left to her quiet life with the old lady.  To an ordinary visitor nothing could have been less exciting, for Lady Ushant very seldom went out and never entertained company.  She was a tall thin old lady with bright eyes and grey hair and a face that was still pretty in spite of sunken eyes and sunken cheeks and wrinkled brow.  There was ever present with her an air of melancholy which told a whole tale of the sadness of a long life.  Her chief excitement was in her two visits to church on Sunday and in the letter which she wrote every week to her nephew at Dillsborough.  Now she had her young friend with her, and that too was an excitement to her,—­and the more so since she had heard the tidings of Larry Twentyman’s courtship.

She made up her mind that she would not speak on the subject to her young friend unless her young friend should speak to her.  In the first three weeks nothing was said; but four or five days before Mary’s departure there came up a conversation about Dillsborough and Bragton.  There had been many conversations about Dillsborough and Bragton, but in all of them the name of Lawrence Twentyman had been scrupulously avoided.  Each had longed to name him, and yet each had determined not to do so.  But at length it was avoided no longer.  Lady Ushant had spoken of Chowton Farm and the widow.  Then Mary had spoken of the place and its inhabitants.  “Mr. Twentyman comes a great deal to our house now,” she said.

“Has he any reason, my dear?”

“He goes with papa once a week to the club; and he sometimes lends my sister Kate a pony.  Kate is very fond of riding.”

“There is nothing else?”

“He has got to be intimate and I think mamma likes him.”