he quiet rectory establishment on the
plans of Arley Hall, where they kept thirty servants; and how she had
nursed Miss Matey through a long, long illness, of which I had never heard
before, but which I now dated in my own mind as following the dismissal of
the suit of Mr. Holbrook. So we talked softly and quietly of old times,
through the long November evening.

The next day Miss Pole brought us word that Mr. Holbrook was dead. Miss
Matey heard the news in silence; in fact, from the account on the previous
day, it was only what we had to expect. Miss Pole kept calling upon us for
some expression of regret, by asking if it was not sad that he was gone:
and saying,

"To think of that pleasant day last June, when he seemed so well! And he
might have lived this dozen years if he had not gone to that wicked Paris,
where they are always having revolutions."

She paused for some demonstration on our part. I saw Miss Matey could not
speak, she was trembling so nervously; so I said what I really felt: and
after a call of some duration--all the time of which I have no doubt Miss
Pole thought Miss Matey received the news very calmly--our visitor took her
leave. But the effort at self-control Miss Matey had made to conceal her
feelings--a concealment she practiced even with me, for she has never
alluded to Mr. Holbrook again, although the book he gave her lies with her
Bible on the little table by her bedside; she did not think I heard her
when she asked the little milliner of Cranford to make her caps something
like the Honorable Mrs. Jamieson's, or that I noticed the reply,

"But she wears widows' caps, ma'am?"

"Oh! I only meant something in that style; not widows', of course, but
rather like Mrs. Jamieson's."

This effort at concealment was the beginning of the tremulous motion of
head and hands which I have seen ever since in Miss Matey.

The evening of the day on which we heard of Mr. Holbrook's death, Miss
Matilda was very silent and thoughtful; after prayers she called Martha
back, and then she stood uncertain what to say.

"Martha!" she said at last; "you are young," and then she made so long a
pause that Martha, to remind her of her half-finished sentence, dropped a
courtesy, and said:

"Yes, please, ma'am; two-and-twenty last third of October, please, ma'am."

"And perhaps, Martha, you may some time meet with a young man you like,
and who likes you. I did say you were not to have followers; but if you
meet wi