and in the spot she had chosen. But she was very young--not thirty years
of age yet--and her little girl would soon grow up--and then? Evidently
her dream of peace was likely to be of limited duration; but she resigned
herself to the unpleasant possibilities of the future with a good grace,
in consideration of the advantages she enjoyed in the present.

Mrs. Ambrose was at home when Mrs. Goddard and little Eleanor came to the
vicarage. Indeed Mrs. Ambrose was rarely out in the afternoon, unless
something very unusual called her away. She received her visitor with the
stern hospitality she exercised towards strangers. The strangers she saw
were generally the near relations of the young gentlemen whom her husband
received for educational purposes. She stood in the front drawing-room,
that is to say, in the most impressive chamber of that fortress which is
an Englishman's house. It was a formal room, arranged by a fixed rule and
the order of it was maintained inflexibly; no event could be imagined of
such terrible power as to have caused the displacement of one of those
chairs, of one of those ornaments upon the chimney-piece, of one of those
engravings upon the walls. The walls were papered with one shade of
green, the furniture was covered with material of another shade of green
and the well-spared carpet exhibited still a third variety of the same
colour. Mrs. Ambrose's sense of order did not extend to the simplest
forms of artistic harmony, but when it had an opportunity of impressing
itself upon inanimate objects which were liable to be moved, washed or
dusted, its effects were formidable indeed. She worshipped neatness and
cleanliness; she left the question of taste to others. And now she stood
in the keep of her stronghold, the impersonation of moral rectitude and
of practical housekeeping.

Mrs. Goddard entered rather timidly, followed by little Eleanor whose
ideas had been so much disturbed by the recent change in her existence,