your own choice; so don't go and pretend to
fret over it. And as to sparing you, you've been spared a deal too
much, and I've been a fool to do it. And just bethink you, Faith, that
if we are now to make one family with my Lady Lettice and Edith, you'd
best be thinking how you can spare them. My Lady Lettice is a deal
newer widow than you, and she's over seventy years on her back, and
you've but forty--"

"Thirty-nine," corrected Faith in a choked voice.

"And she's leaving her home not from choice, but because she has no
choice; and she has spent over fifty years in it, and is like an old oak
which can ill bear uprooting. I only trust those Newcastle Louvaines
will get what they deserve. I say it's a burning shame, never to come
forward nor claim aught for fifty years, until Sir Aubrey and both his
sons were gone, and then down they pounce like vultures on the widow and
her orphan grandson, and set up a claim, forsooth, to the estate--after
all these years! I don't believe they have any right--or at any rate,
they've no business to have it: and if my Lady Lettice had been of my
mind, she'd have had a fight for it, instead of giving in to them; and
if Aubrey Banaster had had a scrap of gumption, he'd have seen to it.
He is the eldest man of the family, and they're pretty nigh all lads but
him. Howbeit, let that pass. Only I want you, Faith, to think of it,
and not go treating my Lady Lettice to a dish of tears every meal she
sits down to, or she'll be sorry you're her daughter-in-law, if she
isn't now; and if her name were Temperance Murthwaite it's much if she
wouldn't be."

"Oh, you can say what you like--you always do--"

"Beg your pardon, Faith; I very generally don't."

"You haven't a bit of feeling for a poor widow. I hope you may never be
a widow--"

"Thank you; I'll have a care of that. Now, Lettice! jump up, maid, and
don your hat and mantle, and I will run down with you to Selwick while
there's a bit of light. My Lady Lettice thought you'd best be there
to-night, so you could be up early and of some use to your Aunt Edith."

It was not Temperance Murthwaite's custom to let the grass grow under
her feet, and the three miles which lay between the little house at
Keswick and Selwick Hall were put behind her and Lettice when another
hour was over.

Selwick Hall stood on the bank of Derwentwater, and was the residence of
Lettice's grandmother, the widowed Lady Louvaine, her daughter Edith,
her