Squire Godwin succeeded in impressing Lady Bell more deeply than all the fine gentlemen whom she had seen at her grand-aunt’s, and in striking her with awe; but she could not complain greatly of his overlooking her, since she, poor child, felt tempted to shrink out of his sight. Mrs. Die was a woman half crazy with wrongs, utterly wanting in principle and self-restraint, and using strong stimulants; but, as she had said of her hate, she had too much to do brooding over her fate and fighting with her enemies, to trouble herself by tormenting Lady Bell. Mrs. Die let the girl alone for the most part, unless when her youth and opening prospects, unblighted, however slender, pierced her aunt with the sting of recollection. Even then Mrs. Die would content herself with a passing taunt at the girl’s girlishness, untold fortunes, and imagined inspirations, and forget all about her the next moment. Mrs. Kitty’s smaller nature and comparative leisure from introspection and desperate schemes, left her more at liberty to cherish a grudge and a jealousy, and to visit them continually, like the dropping of water, on the head of a hapless, defenceless victim. But Mrs. Kitty, too, had an engrossing interest and occupation, which was not snubbing Lady Bell. Mrs. Kitty had room in her narrow heart for a slavish devotion, the more ardent that it flowed in a single confined channel, and that devotion was at once lavished and concentrated on Mrs. Die. In the old days, when Mrs. Die had been a brilliant, ill-regulated, reckless girl, she had taken by storm the heart of the ungifted, branded dependant—reared and retained at St. Bevis’s in the spirit of a coarse tolerance—by the heedless generosity which had overleaped the gulf between the girls, and had raised Mrs. Kitty to a convenient place in Mrs. Die’s confidence and regard. Mrs. Kitty’s hands were full not only with grasping tightly such reins of domestic government as were left at St. Bevis’s, but with protecting Mrs. Die from herself and her neighbours, and cherishing the lost woman so far as she would suffer herself to be cherished. Notwithstanding, there were pullings down in her airs for Lady Bell, which, as she grew accustomed to the process, did not hurt the girl much, only put her on her mettle and provoked her to undesirable pertness.