In two years from this time, strangely enough, the Bates family and almost all trace of them disappeared from Underhayes. Nothing had happened to them for all Nancy’s lifetime till her marriage--nothing of an exciting kind. There had been neither misfortune nor great success in the house; but all had gone on with humdrum regularity, unexciting, unalarming. Mr. Bates had got a little mild promotion, and they had saved a very little money, and for the rest had eaten and drunk, and slept and woke, and all had been as if it might thus go on for ever. So flows the tranquil current of life, in many cases, for years and years, until at length the cycle of change commences, and all that has been done is undone. Nancy’s marriage was the first family event, but it was followed in close succession by others. Charley went to New Zealand shortly after the separation between Arthur Curtis and his wife. Then a little after Sarah Jane married. Then Mr. Bates, in the midst of his tax-collecting, had an accident, and after lingering for a time died; and Mrs. Bates, a person of apparently robust constitution, both bodily and mental, developed all at once, to the amazement of her family and friends, an incapacity to live without the man whom she had not been very enthusiastic about, or devoted to, during his lifetime, and died in her turn, leaving her house desolate. Matilda, the only representative of the name, would have joined Charley in New Zealand but for her sister, to whom she had proved a discreet and faithful companion. After, however, the little house was cleared, and all the old furniture dispersed, sold, or laid up in the house of the Raisins’ for their future use, the two elder sisters disappeared, no one, except, perhaps, Sarah Jane, who said nothing about it, knowing whither. The little parlour passed away, like all the teas and dinners that had been consumed there, and the family existence ended. Notwithstanding the moving events that had been transacted in it, and the temporary link which had been woven between it and the upper classes of society, its history was all over like a bubble, like the snow on the mountain and the foam on the river. The same fate befalls small and great; but in the case of a tax-collector the conclusion is more complete than that which comes upon the higher classes, which Mr. Bates respected so much. Death, emigration, marriage, disappearance, thus followed each other in swift succession. Young Mrs. Raisins, blooming in her shop--where, however, her bridegroom did not permit her to appear to minister to the wants of a vulgar public, keeping her, on the contrary, in high happiness and splendour, and without requiring her to do anything, in her drawing-room above the shop--alone remained of the family in Underhayes. And as for Nancy, no one knew anything about her, nor where she had gone. CHAPTER II.