es strict, for--owing to Mrs Denison's
long ill-health and peculiarly gentle character--I think it scarcely to
be expected that they are not somewhat spoilt.'

She was right. It scarcely _was_ to be expected. It was marvellous that
the girls and their little brother were not more 'spoilt.' Mrs Denison
adored them, and could see no fault in them. Nor was she in any sense a
clever or strong-minded woman. Of inferior birth to her late
husband--the daughter of merely the village doctor--she had married him
when she was nearly forty, making the kindest of stepmothers to his only
child, now Mrs Mildmay; loving her in no sense less devotedly than she
loved her own son, Marmaduke, the child of Mr Denison's old age--the
Uncle Marmy, who was more like an elder brother than an uncle to the
little trio sent home to his mother's care.

But Mrs Denison was so essentially _good_, so single-minded and
truthful, that her influence, even her too great unselfishness for their
sake, had not radically injured her grandchildren. Her death had been
preceded by a slow and gradual decline--none of those about her
suspected the extent of the sufferings she hid so resolutely under a
calm and cheerful exterior--and the end came gently with no bitterness
or shock. Even to Marmaduke, though he loved her devotedly, she had
seemed more like a grandmother than a mother, and her gradual enforced
withdrawal from the family life had prepared him and the girls for what
had to be.

Perhaps the full realisation of their loss only came home to them, when
the question of where they were all to go was decided by a letter from
Colonel Mildmay, telling of his arrangement with his sister, and by
Marmaduke's receiving orders to start almost at once for India.

'I'm glad they didn't come before,' he said. 'If only I could take you
all out with me;' for his regiment was that of his brother-in-law.

'Yes indeed--if only!' said Jacinth, as she said again that first
evening at Thetford.

Stannesley, the Denisons' old home, was to be let. Though not a very
large place, it was expensive to keep up, and Marmaduke was somewhat
short of ready money, and not as yet ambitious of the quiet life of a
country squire. His father had been easy-going, his mother no specially
endowed woman of business; things had suffered, and rents had gone down.
It would need some years' economy before the young man could retire to
live in the old liberal way. But he did not mind; the world w