People often know their own condition much better than is supposed, or, than others do, and Mrs Waynflete knew as well as any doctor could have told her that her hour was coming. She was very glad that no one else appeared to suspect the fact. She did not like sympathy, and even yet she did not feel herself to require support. But she thought much within herself. Those two wills lay heavy on her mind, and so did Guy's criticisms on the management of the mills. She hated to acknowledge as much; but she was really too clever and too experienced a woman not to know that there was more than a possibility of his being right. She had known too much of the books and accounts in past days not to know that of late she had not known them so well. Moreover, her first distaste to Waynflete continued. She did not get accustomed to the bed that she had to sleep in, nor to the chair she had to sit on. She scorned the young vicar, Mr Clifton. She even felt that she would have liked to have a talk with old Mr Whitman of Ingleby, and perhaps let him read her a chapter, though she never had consulted him in her life on any matter, spiritual or temporal. And on one point, in these autumn days, spent in this unfamiliar ancestral home, she changed her mind. She had always meant to be buried at Waynflete, though she had never chosen to live there; but, now, she resolved that she would lie by her husband's side, in Ingleby churchyard. All her life had been spent at Ingleby; she had been born there, in the poor farmhouse which she had so despised. "The lads," the male heirs, her brother's descendants, might make their graves among the old Waynfletes if they liked. As she had dimly felt at first, the object of a life's labour is not so dear as the labour itself; and whenever the charms of Waynflete were discussed, Margaret felt that she was an Ingleby woman. She was as constant to the facts of her life as she had been to the idea that had dominated it. Under the influence of these feelings, she one day sat down, and wrote to Guy a note in which she told more of the truth than she had admitted to those living in the house with her. "Waynflete Hall. "My dear Guy,-- "I took your remarks as to the management of the business very much amiss, as it has always been my way to follow my own judgment, not finding that of other people any improvement on it. But I perceive that it is your right to have your say, and I wish to hear it. I am an old woman, and I shall not have my hand on things much longer. I feel my time is coming, and I would not wish to leave injustice behind me. So I desire that you come over here at once without delay, and put before me what you have got to say, and satisfy my mind on the points that lie between us. Besides, my dear, I wish to have you both here with me. "Your loving aunt,-- "Margaret Waynflete."