ve interests, was a civilising influence, the
results of which continued to manifest themselves after the baronet's
death. On the aesthetic side Arabella profited not at all; to the
beautiful she ever presented a hard insensibility, and in later years
she ceased even to affect pleasure in the things of nature or art which
people generally admired. Her flowery and leafy drawing-room indicated
no personal taste; it came of a suggestion by her gardener when she
converted to her own use the former smoking-room; finding that people
admired and thought it original, she made the arrangement a permanence,
anxious only that the plants exhibited should be nicer and finer than
those possessed by her neighbours. On the other hand, her moral life
had from the first shown capacity of expansion; it held at its service
an intellect, of no very fine quality indeed, but acute and energetic.
In all practical affairs she was greatly superior to the average woman,
adding to woman's meticulous sense of interest and persistent diplomacy
a breadth of view found only in exceptional males; this faculty the
circumstances of her life richly fostered, and, by anomaly, advancing
age enlarged, instead of contracting, the liberality of her spirit.
After fifty years told, when ordinary mortals have long since given
their measure in heart and brain, Lady Ogram steadily advanced.
Solitary possessor of wealth, autocrat over a little world of her own,
instead of fossilising in dull dignity, she proved herself receptive of
many influences with which the time was fraught. She cast off
beliefs--or what she had held as such--and adopted others; she
exchanged old prejudices for new forms of zeal; above all, she chose to
be in touch with youth and aspiration rather than with disillusioned or
retrospective age. Only when failing health shadowed the way before her
did she begin to lose that confident carriage of the mind which,
together with her profound materialism, had made worry and regret and
apprehension things unknown to her. Thus, when old but by no means
senile, she learnt that disquiet of conscience, so common in our day,
which has nothing to do with spiritual perceptiveness, but comes of
habitual concentration on every-day cares and woes, on the life of the
world as apart from that of the soul. Through sleepless nights, Lady
Ogram brooded over the contrast between her own exaltation and the
hopeless level of the swinking multitude. What should she do with