Mrs. Harold Smith had only just managed to catch Miss Dunstable before she left London; but she did do so, and the great heiress had at once seen her lawyers, and instructed them how to act with reference to the mortgages on the Chaldicotes property. Miss Dunstable was in the habit of speaking of herself and her own pecuniary concerns as though she herself were rarely allowed to meddle in their management; but this was one of those small jokes which she ordinarily perpetrated; for in truth few ladies, and perhaps not many gentlemen, have a more thorough knowledge of their own concerns or a more potent voice in their own affairs, than was possessed by Miss Dunstable. Circumstances had lately brought her much into Barsetshire and she had there contracted very intimate friendships. She was now disposed to become, if possible, a Barsetshire proprietor, and with this view had lately agreed with young Mr. Gresham that she would become the purchaser of the Crown property. As, however, the purchase had been commenced in his name, it was so to be continued; but now, as we are aware, it was rumoured that, after all, the duke, or, if not the duke, then the Marquis of Dumbello, was to be the future owner of the Chace. Miss Dunstable, however, was not a person to give up her object if she could attain it, nor, under the circumstances, was she at all displeased at finding herself endowed with the power of rescuing the Sowerby portion of the Chaldicotes property from the duke’s clutches. Why had the duke meddled with her, or with her friend, as to the other property? Therefore it was arranged that the full amount due to the duke on mortgage should be ready for immediate payment; but it was arranged also that the security as held by Miss Dunstable should be very valid.

Miss Dunstable, at Boxall Hill or at Greshamsbury, was a very different person from Miss Dunstable in London; and it was this difference which so much vexed Mrs. Gresham; not that her friend omitted to bring with her into the country her London wit and aptitude for fun, but that she did not take with her up to town the genuine goodness and love of honesty which made her loveable in the country. She was as it were two persons, and Mrs. Gresham could not understand that any lady should permit herself to be more worldly at one time of the year than at another—or in one place than in any other.

“Well, my dear, I am heartily glad we’ve done with that,” Miss Dunstable said to her, as she sat herself down to her desk in the drawing-room on the first morning after her arrival at Boxall Hill.

Mrs. Gresham and Miss Dunstable.
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“What does ‘that’ mean?” said Mrs. Gresham.

“Why, London and smoke and late hours, and standing on one’s legs for four hours at a stretch on the top of one’s own staircase, to be bowed at by any one who chooses to come. That’s all done—for one year, at any rate.”

“You know you like it.”

“No, Mary; that’s just what I don’t know. I don’t know whether I like it or not. Sometimes, when the spirit of that dearest of all women, Mrs. Harold Smith, is upon me, I think that I do like it; but then again, when other spirits are on me, I think that I don’t.”

“And who are the owners of the other spirits?”