So Mrs. Stothard accepted office with the Derinzys, and was with them when, shortly afterwards, they gave up the house at Brompton where they had lived so long, and removed to Beachborough. The change affected Mrs. Stothard but very little; it mattered scarcely at all to her where she was, her time was very much employed in her duties, and what little leisure she found she passed in reading, or in writing to her daughter. She knew perfectly well that she was the subject of an immense amount of curiosity in Beachborough village, and of talk at the village tea-tables; but it did not trouble her one whit. She knew that she was said to be a poor relation of the Derinzy family, and she did not discourage the idea. Thinking over the past, and what might have been, she found a kind of grim humour in the combination which suited her thoroughly. They might say what they liked, she thought, so long as her money was regularly paid, and so long as she found herself able to carry out the one scheme of her life--that of making a good marriage for her daughter Fanny. Fanny then, under the name of Miss Stafford, was apprenticed to Madame Clarisse, the great court milliner, in London, and lived, when she was at home--and that was not often, poor child! for she slaved like a horse--in one little room in a house in South Molton Street, a lodging-house kept by an old sister-nurse of Mrs. Stothard's at St. Vitus's, a most respectable motherly woman, who would look after Fanny, and would at once let her mother know if there was "anything wrong." Not that there was any chance of that. Fanny Stafford acted up too strictly to her mother's teaching, and remembered too well the doctrine which had been inculcated in her girlhood, ever to make that mistake. She had been told that to marry a man considerably above her in pecuniary and social position was her mission in life; to that end she might use all her charms, all her arts; but that end must be marriage--nothing less. This she understood, and daily experience made her more and more impressed with the wisdom of her mother's determination. She had not much heart, she thought; she did not think she had any passion; and she knew that she had keen discrimination and accurate perception of character; so she thought she ought to succeed. Mrs. Stothard was acquainted with the peculiarities of her daughter's character, and thought so too.