which she had played a bass for Anastasia till household work and gout
conspired to rob her knotty fingers of all pliancy. It had been a great
pleasure to her, the playing of these duets with her niece; but they
must, of course, be very poor things, and quite out of date now, for she
had played them when she was a child herself, and on the very same piano
in the parlour at Wydcombe.

So she listened with attention while Martin revealed his scheme of
reform, and this was nothing less than the sending of Anastasia to Mrs
Howard's boarding-school at the county town of Carisbury. The project
took away his sister's breath, for Mrs Howard's was a finishing school
of repute, to which only Mrs Bulteel among Cullerne ladies could afford
to send her daughters. But Martin's high-minded generosity knew no
limits. "It was no use making two bites at a cherry; what had to be
done had better be done quickly." And he clinched the argument by
taking a canvas bag from his pocket, and pouring out a little heap of
sovereigns on to the table. Miss Joliffe's wonder as to how her brother
had become possessed of such wealth was lost in admiration of his
magnanimity, and if for an instant she thought wistfully of the relief
that a small portion of these riches would bring to the poverty-stricken
menage at Bellevue Lodge, she silenced such murmurings in a burst of
gratitude for the means of improvement that Providence had vouchsafed to
Anastasia. Martin counted out the sovereigns on the table; it was
better to pay in advance, and so make an impression in Anastasia's
favour, and to this Miss Joliffe agreed with much relief, for she had
feared that before the end of the term Martin would be off on his
travels again, and that she herself would be left to pay.

So Anastasia went to Carisbury, and Miss Joliffe broke her own rules,
and herself incurred a number of small debts because she could not bear
to think of her niece going to school with so meagre an equipment as she
then possessed, and yet had no ready money to buy better. Anastasia
remained for two half-years at Carisbury. She made such progress with
her music that after much wearisome and lifeless practising she could
stumble through Thalberg's variations on the air of "Home, Sweet Home";
but in French she never acquired the true Parisian accent, and would
revert at times to the "Doo, dellah, derlapostrof, day," of her earlier
teaching, though there is no record that these shortcom