the
first thing that Nancy could remember was seeing her father strike her
mother with his clenched fist so that her mother fell over sideways
from the breakfast-table and lay motionless. The mother was no doubt an
irritating woman and the privates of that regiment appeared to have been
irritating, too, so that the house was a place of outcries and perpetual
disturbances. Mrs Rufford was Leonora's dearest friend and Leonora
could be cutting enough at times. But I fancy she was as nothing to Mrs
Rufford. The Major would come in to lunch harassed and already spitting
out oaths after an unsatisfactory morning's drilling of his stubborn men
beneath a hot sun. And then Mrs Rufford would make some cutting remark
and pandemonium would break loose. Once, when she had been about twelve,
Nancy had tried to intervene between the pair of them. Her father had
struck her full upon the forehead a blow so terrible that she had lain
unconscious for three days. Nevertheless, Nancy seemed to prefer her
father to her mother. She remembered rough kindnesses from him. Once
or twice when she had been quite small he had dressed her in a clumsy,
impatient, but very tender way. It was nearly always impossible to get
a servant to stay in the family and, for days at a time, apparently, Mrs
Rufford would be incapable. I fancy she drank. At any rate, she had so
cutting a tongue that even Nancy was afraid of her--she so made fun of
any tenderness, she so sneered at all emotional displays. Nancy must
have been a very emotional child.

Then one day, quite suddenly, on her return from a ride at Fort William,
Nancy had been sent, with her governess, who had a white face, right
down South to that convent school. She had been expecting to go there in
two months' time. Her mother disappeared from her life at that time. A
fortnight later Leonora came to the convent and told her that her mother
was dead. Perhaps she was. At any rate, I never heard until the very end
what became of Mrs Rufford. Leonora never spoke of her.

And then Major Rufford went to India, from which he returned very seldom
and only for very short visits; and Nancy lived herself gradually into
the life at Branshaw Teleragh. I think that, from that time onwards, she
led a very happy life, till the end. There were dogs and horses and old
servants and the Forest. And there were Edward and Leonora, who loved
her.

I had known her all the time--I mean, that she always came to the
Ashburnhams