use she was not
exactly like other hostesses, and could talk in rather an amusing way.
The years went on; scandal lost its verdure; Lady Ogram was accepted as
a queer woman with a queer history, a rather vulgar eccentric, whose
caprices and enterprises afforded agreeable matter for gossip. No one
had ever ventured to assail her post-matrimonial reputation; she was
fiercely virtuous, and would hold no terms with any woman not wholly
above reproach. It had to be admitted that she bore herself with
increasing dignity; moreover, that she showed a disposition to use her
means and influence for what are called good ends. Towards the year
1870 the name of Lady Ogram began to be mentioned with respect.

Then her husband died. Sir Quentin had doubtless fallen short of entire
happiness; before middle-age he was a taciturn, washed-out sort of man,
with a look of timid anxiety. Perchance he regretted the visions of his
youth, the dreams of glory in marble. When he became master of
Rivenoak, and gave up his London house, Arabella wished him to destroy
all his sculpture, that no evidence might remain of the relations which
had at first existed between them, no visible relic of the time which
she refused to remember. Sir Quentin pleaded against this condemnation,
and obtained a compromise. The fine bust, and a few other of his best
things, were to be transferred to Rivenoak, and there kept under lock
and key. Often had the baronet felt that he would like to look at the
achievements of his hopeful time, but he never summoned courage to
mount to the attic. His years went by in a mouldering inactivity. Once
or twice he escaped alone to the Continent, and wandered for weeks
about the Italian sculpture-galleries, living in the sunny, ardent
past; he came back nerve-shaken and low in health. His death was
sudden--'failure of the heart's action,' said doctors, in their
indisputable phrase--and Lady Ogram shut herself up for a time that she
might not have the trouble of grieving before witnesses.

The baronet had behaved very generously to her in his last will and
testament. Certain sums went to kinsfolk, to charities, to servants;
his land and the bulk of his personal estate became Lady Ogram's own.
She was a most capable and energetic woman of affairs; by her counsel,
Sir Quentin had increased his wealth, and doubtless it seemed to him
that no one had so good a right as she to enjoy its possession. The
sacrifice he had made for her, though