Miss Tremlett had been influenced by various motives, when on hearing of her nephew’s death, she had authorized Geoffrey Baldwin to offer her house as a temporary home for Marion. For one thing, in her heart, as in most others, there was a soft spot, and in her way, she had loved and been proud of Hartford Vere. Then again, though to some extent grasping and money-loving, she was not on the whole ungenerous or stingy. There was one thing she loved better than money and that was herself and her own comfort, and it occurred to her that even if Marion should be left very scantily provided for, she would cause but little additional expense in her household, and would be all the more ready to repay her aunt’s kindness by making herself a useful and agreeable companion. The effect on her nerves of a cheerful young person about the house would, her medical man informed her, be decidedly beneficial. Any way, it would do no harm to try. She had been rather disagreeably well lately, and felt in want of a little excitement. And if Marion failed in all else, there was one point on which it was quite impossible she should disappoint her. The girl’s presence in her house would, at all events, give her something new to grumble about! So much as to Aunt Tremlett. As to Mallingford itself there is not very much to say. It was (in those days at least, possibly the last few years may have improved it) an intensely stupid little town. Dull, with a dullness that to those fortunate people who have had no personal experience of small provincial town life, altogether baffles description. And worse than dull—spiteful, ill-naturedly gossiping, and conceited, with the utterly hopeless conceit, only seen to perfection in the stupidest or people and societies. Conservative of course, to the back-bone, in everything—the more objectionable and undesirable the object of its conservatism, the more stolidly, bull-doggishly tenacious grew Mallingford. Instance the long resistance to the introduction of gas lamps in the streets and public buildings, the still prevailing cobble stones in the market-place, the stiflingly high pews in the peculiarly hideous church, and, last not least, the universally signed petition against that most noisy and blustering of innovators—the railway. The only liberals in Mallingford were its numerous young ladies, who, on the subject of the fashions, became positively rabid. Though their admirers of the opposite sex were few, for the census reported but one single gentleman to every eight or ten equally marriageable damsels, there were really few things a Mallingford girl would have hesitated to do, for the sake of being the first to be seen in the High Street with the latest fashion, whatever it might be, coal-scuttle bonnets or pork-pie hat, high-heeled hoots or Paris crinoline!