'He was a young man, barely thirty; and surely he might hope to retrieve the past. One would have imagined so; but when he set about trying to interest some of his aunt's old friends on his behalf, they turned very coldly away. Mrs Petre's letters and denunciations bore terrible weight against Aubrey; and when he appealed again and again to her, the rebuffs he met with were studied in their insolence and severity. 'Of course, Mr Stanmore attributed her violent behaviour to its real cause--Mrs Danton, who had succeeded in persuading Mrs Petre to discharge all her old servants, upon the plea that her poverty was so great she could not afford to keep them. One in particular Mrs Danton knew it would be necessary to dismiss, and that was Janet Heath, a very superior sort of maid-housekeeper, who had been in her service for over ten years. Janet was filled with indignation when Mrs Danton first took up her residence with Mrs Petre, as she well knew the inferiority of her position, which had hitherto only been acknowledged by the latter so far as the gift of an occasional sovereign or a bundle of cast-off garments went; and to have her suddenly set at the head of affairs, and to have to listen silently to her scurrilous abuse of Mr Aubrey, was more than Janet could calmly submit to. However, when Mrs Petre herself told her that she did not wish her to remain, she had no choice but to depart; and shortly afterwards she married a man to whom she had been engaged for some years. 'But though she had left her service, Janet was too fond and faithful quite to desert Mrs Petre. She resolved to go to see her as often as she possibly could, and above everything to put in a good word as frequently as occasion permitted for Mr Stanmore, whom Janet knew to be, with all his other faults, a good-hearted and well-meaning young man. 'This plan of visiting Mrs Petre in no way suited Mrs Danton's views. She endeavoured, by covert insinuations against Janet, to poison Mrs Petre's mind; but failing in that, she resolved to remove her from Janet's vicinity, and to take a house of her own choosing, with an establishment also selected by herself. She had been in power for about two years when they came to Hilton Lodge, and in that time Mrs Danton had wormed her way pretty successfully into the confidence of Mrs Petre's old friends, and poisoned their minds most thoroughly against her nephew, who after, to his great joy, having been sent for and fully forgiven by Mrs Petre, had suddenly been told his visits to her house were not desired, and that, although she had forgiven, she had no intention of holding any further intercourse with him!