Thorns which nothing could ever bridge over. If it was suggested to her that she should return home, as young widows often do, she would say that she had no home, and it would be true. She would rather be a servant, rather starve! And then her mind went back to Sir Giles. What would he do with her? The old man liked her, she felt sure. And she had been good to him. Whatever her motives had been, whether they would bear scrutiny or not, she had been good to him. She had kept pain away from him as far as she could. She had taken care of all his comforts. She had not permitted him to be disturbed. Dunning and all the rest would have thought it essential that he should go to the funeral and undergo all the misery and excitement of that ceremony. But Patty had prevented that. He had reason to be grateful to her; but would he be grateful? This was the tremendous question. Would he keep her there as the mistress of his house, or would he send her away? Patty had in her jewel-case, carefully locked up, a letter from Margaret Osborne to her uncle, which she thought it wisest to keep back. If Sir Giles received it, it might make him think that Mrs. Osborne was the best mistress for his house, which she was not, Patty felt sure. She put it aside, saying to herself that some time, when the excitement was over and everything had settled down, she would give it--but not now: to what purpose now? Poor Sir Giles wanted to forget his trouble, not to have it forced upon him by condolences. Margaret had written to Patty also a short note full of sorrow for poor Gervase, and asking whether it would be desirable that she should come to Greyshott for his funeral; to which Patty had replied explaining that everything was to be very quiet in consequence of the condition of “dear papa.” “It is he that must be considered in everything,” Patty wrote; “I have the doctor’s orders to keep him as much as possible from all emotion. I will bury my dear husband myself. Nobody else, as you know, has ever been very fond of him, and I shall not ask anybody to come for the form’s sake. If possible, dear papa is not to be told even the day. He is very broken and miserable, but when he is let alone and not reminded, he forgets.” Margaret had accepted this as a refusal of her visit, and she had asked no more. It would have been a painful visit in any case. Colonel Piercey was abroad. There were, therefore, no relations to come to make the occasion more difficult for Patty, and yet there had been no want of “respect.” The county magnates had all attended the melancholy funeral--where the young wife alone was chief mourner. “Why did not Margaret come?” they all asked, and blamed her. But a feeling of sympathy arose for Patty all over the neighbourhood. The doctor spoke with enthusiasm of her devotion as a nurse, and her intelligence and understanding. Poor thing! Poor thing! Whatever her antecedents had been, and however she had acquired