Her diminished power amongst the people had been fully compensated by the sincere love and affection she had won from them by acts of charity and devotion. Even these, however, owed much of their efficacy to the prestige of her station. No peasant in Europe puts so high a value on the intercourse with a rank above his own as does the Irish. The most pleasant flattery to his nature is the notice of “the gentleman,” and it was more than half the boon Mary bestowed upon the poor, that she who sat down beside the bed, who heated the little drink, who raised the head to swallow it, was the daughter of the Great House! Would not her altered fortune destroy this charm? was now her bitter reflection. Up to this hour, greatly reduced as were the means she dispensed, and the influence she wielded, she still lived in the proud home of her family, and all regarded her as the representative of her honored name. But now--No, she could not endure the thought! “If I must descend to further privations,” said she to herself, “let me seek out some new scene,--some spot where I am unknown, have never been heard of; there, at least, I shall be spared the contrast of the past with the present, nor see in every incident the cruel mockery of my former life. “And yet,” thought she, “how narrow-minded and selfish is all this, how mean-spirited, to limit the question to my own feelings! Is there no duty involved in this sacrifice? Shall I not still--reduced though I be in fortune--shall I not still be a source of comfort to many here? Will not the very fact of my presence assure them that they are not deserted? They have seen me under some trials, and the lesson has not been fruitless. Let them then behold me, under heavier ones, not dismayed nor cast down. What I lose in the prestige of station I shall more than gain in sympathy; and so I remain!” No sooner was the resolve formed than all her wonted courage came back. Rallying with the stimulus of action before her, she began to plan out a new life, in which her relation to the people should be closer and nearer than ever. There was a small ornamental cottage on the demesne, known as the Chalet, built by Lady Dorothea after one she had seen in the Oberland; this Mary now determined on for her home, and there, with Catty Broon alone, she resolved to live. “My aunt,” thought she, “can scarcely be so wedded to the Henderson scheme but that this will equally satisfy her wishes; and while it secures a home and a resting-place for-poor Catty, it rescues _me_ from what I should feel as a humiliation.”