I will not enter into all the particulars of our discussion after this, for time would fail me. The last part of Mary’s letter, which she said was not to be shown to me, made me angry. I thought it was vanity on her part to be afraid of interfering with me again. “In what way?” I could not but ask, and that sharply; how could the last chapter of our lives be repeated? Mrs Tufnell only smoothed my hair and soothed me, and called me “dear” and “darling,” but would give no explanation. “What does she mean?” I asked. “Oh, she means, my love--probably she means nothing. It is just a way of talking that people fall into,” said my old lady. I knew this was said simply to quiet me, but on the whole perhaps I preferred it to anything more definite; and, after a time, I allowed myself to be persuaded to pay my stepmother a visit. What a strange journey into the past it seemed! and yet actually we went far away from the scene of the past, into a place so new and unknown to me, that it could awaken no associations. We drove in the comfortable old fly, with the old sleek horse and the old fat man, which was as good as Mrs Tufnell’s private carriage. She did not keep a carriage of her own, but I am sure this fly, in which she drove every day of her life except when she was ill, cost her more than a carriage would have done. She was very apologetic about it always. “I could not undertake the responsibility of a carriage,” she would say; “horses are always getting ill, and your coachman drinks, or he gets into trouble with the maids, or something. Old Groombridge and his fly suit me quite well. No, he is not an old rogue. I have to pay him, of course, for all his trouble, and for the loss of customers, and so forth. You know, Mary, he always suits himself to my convenience at whatever sacrifice----”