test part of her life within
those slate-coloured gates. When he died, and when she, almost
exactly at the same time, found that it would be expedient that she
should take charge of her niece, Mary, she removed herself up to a
small house in Botolph Lane, in which she could live decently on her
L300 a year. It must not be surmised that Botolph Lane was a squalid
place, vile, or dirty, or even unfashionable. It was narrow and old,
having been inhabited by decent people long before the Crescent, or
even Mr. Balfour himself, had been in existence; but it was narrow
and old, and the rents were cheap, and here Miss Marrable was able
to live, and occasionally to give tea-parties, and to provide a
comfortable home for her niece, within the limits of her income. Miss
Marrable was herself a lady of very good family, the late Sir Gregory
Marrable having been her uncle; but her only sister had married a
Captain Lowther, whose mother had been first cousin to the Earl of
Periwinkle; and therefore on her own account, as well as on that of
her niece, Miss Marrable thought a good deal about blood. She was
one of those ladies,--now few in number,--who within their heart
of hearts conceive that money gives no title to social distinction,
let the amount of money be ever so great, and its source ever so
stainless. Rank to her was a thing quite assured and ascertained,
and she had no more doubt as to her own right to pass out of a
room before the wife of a millionaire than she had of the right of
a millionaire to spend his own guineas. She always addressed an
attorney by letter as Mister, raising up her eyebrows when appealed
to on the matter, and explaining that an attorney is not an esquire.
She had an idea that the son of a gentleman, if he intended to
maintain his rank as a gentleman, should earn his income as a
clergyman, or as a barrister, or as a soldier, or as a sailor. Those
were the professions intended for gentlemen. She would not absolutely
say that a physician was not a gentleman, or even a surgeon; but she
would never allow to physic the same absolute privileges which, in
her eyes, belonged to law and the church. There might also possibly
be a doubt about the Civil Service and Civil Engineering; but she had
no doubt whatever that when a man touched trade or commerce in any
way he was doing that which was not the work of a gentleman. He might
be very respectable, and it might be very necessary that he should do
it; but brewers,