mildly moral and
instructive to suit Miss Wells's taste.

The neighbourhood all mourned Mr. Charlecote as a personal loss, and
could hardly help regarding any successor as their enemy. Miss
Charlecote had been just enough known in her girlish days not to make her
popular in a commonplace neighbourhood; the ladies had criticised her
hair and her genius, and the gentlemen had been puzzled by her searching
questions into their county antiquities, and obliged to own themselves
unaware of a Roman milestone propping their bailiff's pigstye, or of the
spur of a champion of one of the Roses being hung over their family pew.
But when Mr. Henderson and the Raymonds reported pleasantly of her, and
when once or twice she had been seen cantering down the lanes, or
shopping in Elverslope, and had exchanged a bow with a familiar face, the
gentlemen took to declaring that the heiress was an uncommonly fine woman
after all, and the ladies became possessed with the perception that it
was high time to call upon Miss Charlecote--what could she be doing with
those two children?

So there were calls, which Honor duly returned, and then came
invitations, but to Miss Wells's great annoyance, Honor decided against
these. It was not self-denial, but she thought it suitable. She did not
love the round of county gaieties, and in her position she did not think
them a duty. Retirement seemed to befit the widowhood, which she felt so
entirely that when Miss Wells once drove her into disclaiming all
possibility of marrying, she called it 'marrying again.' When Miss Wells
urged the inexpedience of absolute seclusion, she said she would continue
to make morning calls, and she hoped in time to have friends of her own
to stay with her; she might ask the Raymonds, or some of the quiet,
clerical families (the real _elite_, be it observed) to spend a day or
drink tea, but the dinner and ball life was too utterly incongruous for
an elderly heiress. When it came to the elderly heiress poor Miss Wells
was always shut up in utter despair--she who thought her bright-locked
darling only grew handsomer each day of her pride of womanhood.

The brass which Honora had chosen for her cousin's memorial was slow in
being executed, and summer days had come in before it was sent to
Hiltonbury. She walked down, a good deal agitated, to ascertain whether
it were being rightly managed, but, to her great annoyance, found that
the church having been left open, so many