Lady Farrington had been an eccentric woman even in her husband’s lifetime. Her ways had been odd; her manners strange. She was given to curious likes and dislikes, which showed themselves in extraordinary ways. Thus she hated the wife of a neighbouring squire--an upstart woman, certainly, but nothing worse than _gauche_ or ill-bred. Whenever this lady called at the hall the chair on which she had sat was sent to the upholsterers to be re-covered. On one occasion, when she came at the time of afternoon tea, Lady Farrington threw the cup and saucer her visitor had used into the fire, declaring it should never be drunk out of again. A more unnatural antipathy was that which she long entertained for her second son--a dislike which had caused him much misery, and her much subsequent anguish of mind. As against all this, she had been extravagantly fond of her husband and her first-born. When the former left her even for a few hours, she kept his hat and walking-stick in the room with her, as though to cheat herself into the belief that he was really in the house; the latter she coddled and cossetted to such an extent that he grew up weakly and died young. But after all her bitter trials and heavy blows, her eccentricity had developed so rapidly that it might fairly be called by a stronger name. At first she shut herself up in a private chamber, surrounded by the relics of happier days, and brooded sorrowfully over riding-whips, cricket-bats, and all manner of childish toys. Then she went to the other extreme; threw off her widow’s weeds and decked out in gay colours, and with a long white veil, drove about the country lanes in a carriage with grey horses, as though she were a newly-married bride. When Sir Rupert’s persecution had grown into a serious annoyance, she concentrated upon him all the aversion she had once levelled at more innocent objects of dislike. She never would have admitted him to the house, but as he would take no denial she consoled herself by throwing open all the windows and doors, whatever the weather, directly he had left the house, insisting that the place was unfit for habitation until it had been thoroughly aired. Then, saying his threats and menaces put her in bodily fear, she got into the habit of packing all her most treasured belongings in one or two trunks which she kept locked in her bedroom, under her own eye, in readiness as it were for immediate flight.