was merely the
marketing of one's essential commodity, and as her plump and indolent
body was disinclined to privations of any sort, she elected the role of
useful friend to fashionable and luxurious women. It was not an exalted
niche to fill in life, but at least she had learned to fill it to
perfection, and her ambitions were modest. Moreover, a certain integrity
of character and girlish enthusiasm had saved her from the more
corrosive properties of her anomalous position, and she was not only
clever enough to be frankly useful without servility, but she had become
so indispensable to certain of her friends, that although still blooming
in her early forties, she would no more have deserted them for a mere
husband than she would have renounced her comfortable and varied
existence for the no less varied uncertainties of matrimony.

It was not often that a kindly fate had overlooked her for so long a
period as two years, and when she had accepted the invitation of one of
the old castle playmates to visit her in Florence, it had been with a
lively anticipation that made dismay the more poignant in the face of
hypochondria. Nevertheless, realizing her debt to this first of her
patrons, and with much of her old affection revived, she wandered from
one capital and specialist to the next, until death gave her liberty.
She was not unrewarded, but the legacy inspired her with no desire for
an establishment beyond her room at the Club in Dover Street, the
companionship of friends not too exacting, the agreeable sense of
indispensableness, and a certain splendor of environment which gave a
warmth and color to life; and which she could not have commanded had she
set up in middle years as an independent spinster of limited income. She
had received many impatient letters while abroad, to which she had
replied with fluent affection and picturesque gossip, never losing touch
for a moment. When release came she had hastened home to book herself
for the house-parties, and with Victoria Gwynne, although one of the
least opulent of her friends, first on the list. She had had several
correspondents as ardent as herself, and there was little gossip of the
more intimate sort that had not reached her sooner or later, but she
found subtle changes in Victoria for which she could not as yet account.
She had now been at Capheaton and alone with her friend for three days,
but there had been a stress of duties for both, and the hostess had
never b