“Cook says that now father is dead I’m master here, and everyone will have to do what I tell them.” Barbara lifted her head and looked at him, and something in her fawn-like eyes, a mute reproach, pierced to the boy’s heart. At any rate, he began to whimper and left the room. There was little in the remark, which was such as a vulgar servant might well make thoughtlessly. Yet it brought home to Barbara the grim fact of her loss more completely perhaps than anything had done. Her beloved husband was dead, of no more account in the world than those who had passed from it at Eastwich a thousand years ago. He was dead, and soon would be forgotten by all save her, and she was alone; in her heart utterly alone. The summer came and everyone grew cheerful. Aunt Thompson arrived at the Hall to stay, and urged Barbara to put away past things and resign herself to the will of Providence—as she had done in the case of the departed Samuel. “After all,” she said, “it might have been worse. You might have been called upon to nurse an invalid for twenty years, and when at last he went, have found the best part of your life gone, as I did,” and she sighed heavily. “As it is, you still look quite a girl, having kept your figure so well; you are comfortably off and have a good position, and in short there is no knowing what may happen in the future. You must come up and stay with me this winter, dear, instead of poking yourself away in this damp old house, where everybody seems to die of consumption. Really it is a sort of family vault, and if you stop here long enough you will catch something too.” Barbara thanked her with a sad little smile, and answered that she would think over her kind invitation and write to her later. But in the end she never went to London, at least not to stay, perhaps it reminded her too vividly of her life there with Anthony. At Eastwich she could bear such memories, but for some unexplained reason it was otherwise in London. Indeed, in the course of time her aunt gave up the attempt to persuade her, and devoted herself to forwarding the fortunes of her other pretty nieces, Barbara’s sisters, two of whom, it should be said, already she had settled comfortably in life. Also she took a fancy to the boy, in whose rough, energetic nature she found something akin to her own. “I am sick of women,” she said; “it is a comfort to have to do with a male thing.” So it came about that after he went to school young Anthony spent a large share of his holidays at his great-aunt’s London house. It may be added that he got no good from these visits, since Lady Thompson spoilt him and let him have his way in everything. Also she gave him more money than a boy ought to have. As a result, or partly so, Barbara found that her son grew more and more uncontrollable. He mixed with grooms and low characters, and when checked flew into fits of passion which frightened her.