to her that such an hour cut up the day and interfered with clerical work.  Her lunch was always of bread and cheese, and they who lunched with her either eat that or the bread without the cheese.  An afternoon ‘tea’ was a thing horrible to her imagination.  Tea and buttered toast at half-past eight in the evening was the great luxury of her life.  She was as strong as a horse, and had never hitherto known a day’s illness.  As a consequence of this, she did not believe in the illness of other people, especially not in the illness of women.  She did not like a girl who could not drink a glass of beer with her bread and cheese in the middle of the day, and she thought that a glass of port after dinner was good for everybody.  Indeed, she had a thorough belief in port wine, thinking that it would go far to cure most miseries.  But she could not put up with the idea that a woman, young or old, should want the stimulus of a glass of sherry to support her at any odd time of the day.  Hot concoctions of strong drink at Christmas she would allow to everybody, and was very strong in recommending such comforts to ladies blessed, or about to be blessed, with babies.  She took the sacrament every month, and gave away exactly a tenth of her income to the poor.  She believed that there was a special holiness in a tithe of a thing, and attributed the commencement of the downfall of the Church of England to rent charges, and the commutation of clergymen’s incomes.  Since Judas, there had never been, to her thinking, a traitor so base, or an apostate so sinful, as Colenso; and yet, of the nature of Colenso’s teaching she was as ignorant as the towers of the cathedral opposite to her.

She believed in Exeter, thinking that there was no other provincial town in England in which a maiden lady could live safely and decently.  London to her was an abode of sin; and though, as we have seen, she delighted to call herself one of the county set, she did not love the fields and lanes.  And in Exeter the only place for a lady was the Close.  Southernhay and Northernhay might be very well, and there was, doubtless a respectable neighbourhood on the Heavitree side of the town; but for the new streets, and especially for the suburban villas, she had no endurance.  She liked to deal at dear shops; but would leave any shop, either dear or cheap, in regard to which a printed advertisement should reach her eye.  She paid all her bills at the end of each six months, and almost took a delight in high prices.  She would rejoice that bread should be cheap, and grieve that meat should be dear, because of the poor; but in regard to other matters no reduction in the cost of an article ever pleased her.  She had houses as to which she was told by her agent that the rents should be raised; but she would not raise them.  She had others which it was difficult to let without lowering the rents, but she would not lower them.  All change was to her hateful and unnecessary.