If Lord Lindores was determined as to the value of wealth, Lady Lindores was one of those women who have come to the silent conclusion that nothing is of any great value, and that life has no prizes at all. What does it matter? she was in the habit of saying to herself. She did not believe in happiness--a little less comfort or a little more was scarcely worth struggling for; and no doubt, as Lord Lindores said, wealth was one of the few really solid and reliable things in the world, a thing with which many minor goods could be purchased--relief to the poor, which was always a subject of satisfaction, and other alleviations of life. Lady Car was sacrificed to these tenets. But Providence had been good to her: and while she was still young her husband had died. If he did not justify Lord Lindores’ expectations in his life he did in his death. For he left everything in his wife’s hands; not only had she the excellent jointure which her settlements secured her--a jointure without any mean and petty clause about marrying again--but everything was left in her hands--the control of the property during little Tom’s minority, and almost every advantage which a queen-mother could have. Tom was a little fellow of six, so that a long period of supremacy was in Carry’s hands, and the rough fellow whom she had almost hated, from whom her very soul had shrunk with a loathing indescribable, had done her the fullest justice. It is doubtful whether Lady Car was at all touched by these evidences of devotion on the part of a man who had bullied and oppressed her for years. But she was startled into violent and passionate compunction, extraordinary in so gentle a person, by the still wilder and more impassioned joy which swept over her soul when she heard of his sudden death. Poor Lady Car had not been able to resist that flood of exultation which took possession of her against her will. What did she want with his money? He was dead and she was free. It filled her with a guilty, boundless delight, and then with compunction beyond expression, as she tried to return from that wild joy and took herself to task.