e fronted the lady of
Rivenoak as no one had ever dared to do. The baronet's widow, losing
all command of herself, caught up the nearest missile--a little
ivory-framed hand-mirror and hurled it at her antagonist, who was
struck full on the forehead and staggered.

"You shall pay for this, you old hag," shrieked the injured woman.
"I'll pull you up before the Hollingford magistrates, and I'll tell
them where you got your manners. I know now that it's true, what Mrs.
Robb told my sister, that you began life as a"--Saxon monosyllable--"on
London streets!"

Some minutes later, a servant sent to Lady Ogram's room by the
retreating combatant found her mistress lying unconscious. For a day or
two the lady of Rivenoak was thought to be near her end; but the
struggle prolonged itself, hope was seen, and in three months' time the
patient went about her garden and park in a bath chair. Doctors opined
that she would never walk again; yet, before six months were out, Lady
Ogram was down in Cornwall, taking the air very much as of old. But her
aspect had greatly changed; her body had shrunk, her face had become
that of an old, old woman. Then it was that she renewed her falling
locks, and appeared all at once with the magnificent crown of auburn
hair which was henceforth to astonish beholders.

More than ten years had now elapsed since that serious illness. Lady
Ogram's age was seventy-nine. Medical science declared her a marvel,
and prudently held it possible that she might live to ninety.

What to do with her great possessions had long been a harassing subject
of thought with Lady Ogram. She wished to use them for some
praiseworthy purpose, which, at the same time, would perpetuate her
memory. More than twenty years ago she had instructed her solicitor to
set on foot an inquiry for surviving members of her own family. The
name was Tomalin. Search had gone on with more or less persistence, and
Tomalins had come to light, but in no case could a clear connection be
established with the genealogical tree, which so far as Arabella had
knowledge of it, rooted in the person of John Tomalin of Hackney, her
grandfather, by trade a cabinet-maker, deceased somewhere about 1840.
Since her illness, Lady Ogram had fallen into the habit of brooding
over the days long gone by. She revived the memory of her home in
Camden Town, of her life as a not-ill-cared-for child, of her
experiences in a West-end workroom, her temptations, multiplied as sh