She went to the little Dyke-Road cottage to see Cecil Chudleigh--to inspect her, it may be said, so sharply did she scrutinise, so closely did she interrogate the girl. But Lady Cecil's mind was too candid to shrink from questioning; and she thought her aunt most nobly generous when that lady proposed to adopt her henceforward as companion, reader, amanuensis, and prop and comfort to her declining years. Lady Cecil certainly did not happen to know that the widow had been for some time on the look-out for a suitable person as companion and drudge, and had only failed to suit herself because, in her own words, "the impertinent creatures wanted such preposterous salaries, and asked if I allowed port at luncheon, as their physicians had ordered it. Their physicians, indeed! a dispensary-surgeon, or the parish apothecary, I should think!" cried the widow, impatiently; for she was an energetic and plain-speaking person, who was always proclaiming her want of "common patience" with the failings and follies of her fellow-creatures. Lady Cecil went home with the dowager, and ministered very patiently to her wants and pleasures, and read the newspapers to her, and beat down the tradespeople, and disputed about stray entries of mutton-chops and half-pounds of tea that had or had not been supplied, and counted the glass, and was responsible for the spoons, and trembled when the widow's own parlour-maid chipped a morsel out of one of the General's tumblers; for was it not her duty to see that neither glass nor china was broken, and that the silver _entrèe_-dishes, salvers, butter-boats, and tea-trays were rubbed with the hand only, and not scratched and smudged with a greasy, gritty leather? Cecil's own pretty pink palms helped to clean the dowager's plate sometimes when there was a festival in Dorset Square. Mrs. MacClaverhouse was very fond of society, and entertained innumerable elderly warriors and judges of the Sudder, with their wives and daughters, in her stuffy little dining-room. The splendid silver and glass were set forth, the rare old wines were brought out very often in the London season, and Lady Cecil bowed under the burden of a new kind of care, and went to sleep oppressed by the terror of a tablespoon missing from the plate-basket, or a butter-boat that had not been put away. Sometimes she felt a sick yearning for the old monotonous days with her father; for when they were saddest there had been a tender quiet in their sadness. In the new life there might be no sorrow, but then there was such continual worry. The burdens laid upon her were very small ones, but then there were so many of them; and every day it seemed as if the last straw would be added to the heap, and she must sink down in the dust and die.