he knew it a blight upon his
life, did but increase the power exercised over him by his arbitrary
spouse; he never ceased to feel a certain pride in her, pride in the
beauty of her face and form, pride in the mental and moral vigour which
made her so striking an exception to the rule that low-born English
girls cannot rise above their native condition. Arabella's family had
given him no trouble; holding it a duty to abandon them, she never saw
parents or brothers after her marriage, and never spoke of them. Though
violent of temper, she had never made her husband suffer from this
characteristic; to be sure, Sir Quentin was from the first, submissive,
and rarely gave her occasion for displeasure. Over the baronet's grave
in the little churchyard of Shawe she raised a costly monument. Its
sole inscription was the name of the deceased, with the dates of his
birth and death; Lady Ogram knew not, indeed, what else to add.

Fully another ten years elapsed before the widow's health showed any
sign of failing. It was whilst passing a winter in Cornwall, that she
suffered a slight paralytic attack, speedily, in appearance, overcome,
but the beginning of steady decline. Her intellectual activity had
seemed to increase as time went on. Outgrowing various phases of
orthodox religious zeal, outgrowing an unreasoned conservatism in
political and social views, she took up all manner of novel causes, and
made Rivenoak a place of pilgrimage for the apostles of revolution. Yet
the few persons who enjoyed close acquaintance with her knew that, at
heart, she still nourished the pride of her Tank, and that she had
little if any genuine sympathy with democratic principles. Only a moral
restlessness, a perhaps half-conscious lack of adaptation to her
circumstances, accounted for the antinomianism which took hold upon
her. Local politics found her commonly on the Conservative side, and,
as certain indiscreet inquirers found to their cost, it was perilous to
seek Lady Ogram's reasons for this course. But there came at length a
schism between her and the Hollingford Tories: it dated from the
initial stage of her great quarrel with their representative Mr. Robb.

Lady Ogram, who was on the lookout in these latter years for struggling
merit or talent which she could assist, interested herself in the son
of a poor woman of Shawe, a boy who had won a scholarship at
Hollingford School, and seemed full of promise. Being about sixteen,
the lad had a