for the glories of debate; and though she still
liked her rubber, and could wake herself up to the old fire in the
detection of a revoke or the claim for a second trick, her rubbers
were few and far between, and she would leave her own house on an
evening only when all circumstances were favourable, and with many
precautions against wind and water. Some said that she was becoming
old, and that she was going out like the snuff of a candle. But Sir
Peter Mancrudy declared that she might live for the next fifteen
years, if she would only think so herself. "It was true," Sir Peter
said, "that in the winter she had been ill, and that there had been
danger as to her throat during the east winds of the spring;--but
those dangers had passed away, and, if she would only exert herself,
she might be almost as good a woman as ever she had been." Sir Peter
was not a man of many words, or given to talk frequently of his
patients; but it was clearly Sir Peter's opinion that Miss Stanbury's
mind was ill at ease. She had become discontented with life, and
therefore it was that she cared no longer for the combat of tongues,
and had become cold even towards the card-table. It was so in truth;
and yet perhaps the lives of few men or women had been more innocent,
and few had struggled harder to be just in their dealings and
generous in their thoughts.

There was ever present to her mind an idea of failure and a fear lest
she had been mistaken in her views throughout her life. No one had
ever been more devoted to peculiar opinions, or more strong in the
use of language for their expression; and she was so far true to
herself, that she would never seem to retreat from the position she
had taken. She would still scorn the new fangles of the world around
her, and speak of the changes which she saw as all tending to evil.
But, through it all, there was an idea present to herself that
it could not be God's intention that things should really change
for the worse, and that the fault must be in her, because she had
been unable to move as others had moved. She would sit thinking of
the circumstances of her own life and tell herself that with her
everything had failed. She had loved, but had quarrelled with her
lover; and her love had come to nothing--but barren wealth. She had
fought for her wealth and had conquered;--and had become hard in the
fight, and was conscious of her own hardness. In the early days of
her riches and power she had taken he