Chapter II

SHE had gone to Mrs. Lowder on her mother's
death gone with an effort the strain and pain of
which made her at present, as she recalled them,
reflect on the long way she had travelled since then.
There had been nothing else to do not a penny
in the other house, nothing but unpaid bills that had
gathered thick while its mistress lay mortally ill,
and the admonition that there was nothing she must
attempt to raise money on, since everything be
longed to the " estate. How the estate would turn
out at best presented itself as a mystery altogether
gruesome; it had proved, in fact, since then a residu
um a trifle less scant than, with Marian, she had for
some weeks feared; but the girl had had at the be
ginning rather a wounded sense of its being watched
on behalf of Marian and her children. What on
earth was it supposed that she wanted to do to it?
She wanted in truth only to give up to abandon her
own interest, which she, no doubt, would already
have done had not the point been subject to Aunt
Maud's sharp intervention. Aunt Maud's inter
vention was all sharp now, and the other point, the
great one, was that it was to be, in this light, either
all put up with or all declined. Yet at the winter's
end, nevertheless, she could scarce have said what

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v?