in everything, and still beautiful, in extreme old
age. Everybody about her, and in particular all the people who helped to
keep the thorns from her path, and felt themselves to have a hand in her
preservation, were proud of Lady Mary and she was perhaps a little, a
very little, delightfully, charmingly, proud of herself. The doctor,
beguiled by professional vanity, feeling what a feather she was in his
cap, quite confident that she would reach her hundredth birthday, and
with an ecstatic hope that even, by grace of his admirable treatment and
her own beautiful constitution, she might (almost) solve the problem and
live forever, gave up troubling about the will which at a former period
he had taken so much interest in. "What is the use?" he said; "she will
see us all out." And the vicar, though he did not give in to this, was
overawed by the old lady, who knew everything that could be taught her,
and to whom it seemed an impertinence to utter commonplaces about duty,
or even to suggest subjects of thought. Mr. Furnival was the only man who
did not cease his representations, and whose anxiety about the young
Mary, who was so blooming and sweet in the shadow of the old, did not
decrease. But the recollection of the bit of paper in the secret drawer
of the cabinet, fortified his old client against all his attacks. She had
intended it only as a jest, with which some day or other to confound him,
and show how much wiser she was than he supposed. It became quite a
pleasant subject of thought to her, at which she laughed to herself. Some
day, when she had a suitable moment, she would order him to come with all
his formalities, and then produce her bit of paper, and turn the laugh
against him. But oddly, the very existence of that little document kept
her indifferent even to the laugh. It was too much trouble; she only
smiled at him, and took no more notice, amused to think how astonished
he would be,--when, if ever, he found it out.

It happened, however, that one day in the early winter the wind changed
when Lady Mary was out for her drive; at least they all vowed the wind
changed. It was in the south, that genial quarter, when she set out, but
turned about in some uncomfortable way, and was a keen northeaster when
she came back. And in the moment of stepping from the carriage, she
caught a chill. It was the coachman's fault, Jervis said, who allowed the
horses to make a step forward when Lady Mary was getting out, and kept
h