The other spare bedroom in the house was occupied by Madame Pauline Du Tertre, who had for some time been installed there, and had regularly taken up her position as the friend of the family and confidential adviser to the female head of the house. Immediately on gaining her footing within the walls, Pauline had succeeded in establishing herself in the good graces of the self-contained, silent woman, who hitherto had never known what it was to have any one to share her confidences, to listen patiently to her never-ceasing complaints, and to be able and willing to make little suggestions which chimed-in with Mrs. Calverley's thoughts and wishes. Years ago, before her first marriage, Jane Calverley had had a surfeit of toadyism and flattery from her poor relations and dependants, and from the servants, who cringed to and fawned upon the young girl as though they had been southern slaves and she their owner. But in George Gurwood's days, and since her marriage with her second husband, Mrs. Calverley had made no friends, and even those whose interest it was to stand well with her had found it impossible to break through the barriers of icy reserve with which she surrounded herself. They did not approach her in the proper manner perhaps, they did not go to work in the right way. Commonly bred and ill-educated people as they were, they imagined that the direct road to Jane Calverley's favour lay in pitying her and speaking against her husband, with whom she was plainly at strife. As is usual with such people, they overacted their parts; they spoke strongly and bitterly in their denunciation of Mr. Calverley; they were coarse, and their loud-trumpeted compassion for their mistress jarred upon its recipient. Jane Calverley was a proud as well as a hard woman, and her mind revolted against the idea of being openly compassionated by her inferiors; so she kept her confidences rigidly locked in her own breast, and Pauline's was the first hand to press a spring by which the casket was opened.