Then again, the canon’s widow had the tact never to bore Giovanna with too much, either of her talk or her company, when they two were at home together. The widow had her own cosy sitting-room, and there, when her presence was not required elsewhere, what between needlework and novel-reading, she never found the time hang heavy on her hands. The late canon had objected to novels on principle as being a species of mental pabulum beneath the consideration of reasonable beings, as well as entailing results which in many cases were positively harmful, and as long as he lived his wife had meekly acquiesced in his dictum. Now, however, that she was her own mistress, she proceeded to indemnify her starved imagination for its long abstinence. Fortunately there was a very tolerable library in Mapleford, which for her proved an inexhaustible mine of intellectual treasures. It mattered not that numbers of the works on its shelves dated back a quarter of a century or more, to her they were as new, fresh, and wonderful—perhaps more so—as if they had borne yesterday’s imprimatur. And how she revelled in the love stories, dear little lady that she was! Hers had been a repressed and unsatisfied existence, and now when she sat, often till long after the rest of the household was abed, deep in some sweet tale of love and constancy, of partings and comings together again, she would feel for a little while as if she were again a girl in her teens with all life’s possibilities still before her. Then, when she had read the last line of the last chapter, she would shut the book with a sigh and remove her spectacles, and murmur under her breath, “What would dear Stephen say if he knew how I had been occupying my time? I am afraid he would think me greatly to blame.” For all that, undeterred by any qualms of conscience, she would begin a fresh novel next day with an unappeased appetite. While Sir Gilbert had been at the pains to provide his daughter-in-law with a suitable companion, he doubtless expected, if the matter ever crossed his mind, that she would provide her own maid. But Giovanna, who all her life had been used to wait on herself, would have been quite satisfied to go on doing the same for ever had not Captain Verinder impressed upon her that, for a person in her position, a maid was an absolute necessity. Further than that, he undertook to supply her with the necessity in question, which he did in the person of Lucille Fretin, the daughter of one of his many more or less impecunious foreign acquaintances. It was quite understood between Lucille and the Captain that she should keep both her eyes and ears open, so as to be in a position to furnish him with a minute account of everything that went on under the roof at Maylings, together with any scraps of gossip, or information which might reach her anent the Chase and its inmates.