pleasant! Why did she bring her up so if she did not mean to provide for
her? I think she must have been at heart a wicked old woman."

"Oh no! we must not say that. I dare say, as my son says, she always
meant to do it sometime-"

"Sometime! how long did she expect to live, I wonder?"

"Well," said the doctor's mother, "it is wonderful how little old one
feels sometimes within one's self, even when one is well up in years."
She was of the faction of the old, instead of being like Mrs. Bowyer, who
was not much over thirty, of the faction of the young. She could make
excuses for Lady Mary; but she thought that it was unkind to bring the
poor little girl here in ignorance of her real position, and in the way
of men who, though old enough to know better, were still capable of
folly,--as what man is not, when a girl of eighteen is concerned? "I
hope," she added, "that the earl will do something for her. Certainly he
ought to, when he knows all that his grandmother did, and what her
intentions must have been. He ought to make her a little allowance; that
is the least he can do,--not, to be sure, such a provision as we all
hoped Lady Mary was going to make for her, but enough to live upon. Mr.
Furnival, I believe, has written to him to that effect."

"Hush!" cried the vicar's wife; indeed she had been making signs to the
other lady, who stood with her back to the door, for some moments. Mary
had come in while this conversation was going on. She had not paid any
attention to it; and yet her ear had been caught by the names of Lady
Mary, and the earl, and Mr. Furnival. For whom was it that the earl
should make an allowance enough to live upon? whom Lady Mary had not
provided for, and whom Mr. Furnival had written about? When she sat down