“Madam, a second time everything shall be as you will, and as your friends—such as Madam Sundon and your man of business, if you will please to name him—may decide for you,” Mrs. Walsh laid down the law. Lady Bell knew that she was not and never would be mistress of Trevor Court. Not that she desired it; she even recoiled from it as from a sacrilege. After the funeral, when the two ladies happened to be alone together, Mrs. Sundon said to Lady Bell— “They are good people, these Walshes, my dear. I should think very good people to deal with and to raise a country parish sunk in rude ignorance and gross transgression. That was not your case exactly, but I think you might have got on with them, and been the better and not the worse for them. To be plain with you, I cannot help saying, though it may be presumptuous, that I think I could have got on with them. I could acquire a great regard for that woman, and I fancy I might have a still greater for her good man. As for Sally, I should have sought to soften her brusqueness; yet brusqueness is not so great a fault when it comes to weighing faults. But you were too young, and you were petulant between youth and hard usage.” “I shall get on with them now,” said Lady Bell wistfully, looking incredibly young and very fair in the weeds which had been provided for her, and which she had hastened to put on with her trembling frightened fingers, as a mark of respect for the dead, doing it the more eagerly because she had failed in respect for the living. “I see the servants look sourly on me, and no wonder,” confided Lady Bell to her friend, “for they stood by their master, whom his wife left. But I’ll bear it, and try to bring them to think better of me, though Trevor Court is not mine, and I cannot stay here, and keep the old people and ask them to serve me. Mrs. Walsh will see to her cousin’s household, that is my comfort. I will do everything Mrs. Walsh bids me from this time. I’ll be good, Mrs. Sundon,” promised Lady Bell, with a faint smile at her own childishness. “But seriously, Mrs. Walsh took my place, and saved me from a grievous reflection which would have haunted my death-bed. She will teach me to be a self-denying, devoted Christian woman like herself. I believe I did not judge Sally Walsh justly,” Lady Bell finished with a little sigh of compunction and doubt. “I dare say she was not so pert and rude as I thought her. I know she was far more dutiful than I have been.”