Fan ceased to pay the smallest heed to the fact that still there came no recognition of her entrance into the Stanhope family save from pretty, temporising, meaningless letters written by Agneta. The other members coolly ignored the intruder. Mrs. Harry Stanhope had no concern to spare for the consciousness that the little household at Copley Grange Farm were not keeping their first footing, which had seemed to be their birthright, among the upper ten of Friarton. She did not even mind that the Polleys and Dadds grew loud in amazed pity—in which, at the same time, she believed they revelled, over her altered circumstances. Mrs. Harry Stanhope was not only reduced to sending butter, cheese and eggs into the town for sale, she came herself to the Polleys’ shop and the cheese shop, to square the accounts which no one else at the farm could make out. Everybody knew Harry Stanhope had turned out a gentle beggar and purely ornamental. He could not afford to keep a bailiff to give the orders for which he was so little prepared that his men continually laughed in their sleeves at the instructions they received. The mistress of Copley Grange Farm commanded no more help than she could get from a girl under twenty in addition to the dairyman to manage the dairy and poultry-yard, on which it was evident the principal dependence of the farmer must rest. And did not the old Fan Constable look worn and pulled down, though she might be proud and ‘game’ to the last, as Mrs. Harry Stanhope? The truth was that when Fan was from home or in society without Harry, her eyes had already acquired the fixed, abstracted look of eyes which are looking beyond their present surroundings, and seeing in the distance things invisible to her companions. Her ears were constantly on the alert, strained to catch sounds inaudible to the rest of the party. While she was taking her share in the conversation or the business going on about her, there was a perpetual undercurrent of thought and care in her mind which had no reference to the topics discussed. She had great self-command, so that she could preserve a double consciousness, but she was never at ease, never without trouble; and the unresting worry beneath the calm and smiling surface, showed itself in a haggard, aging look which was rapidly robbing Fan of all traces of her youth.