Sir Philip said something about his mother finding it pleasant to visit her daughters also.
"Never," she replied. "They went their way, and I shall go mine. How much have I seen of them in more than twenty years? I have only my son." And Lady Longridge wiped her eyes, but the light was dim, and tears were strange to them, so perhaps there was no real moisture there. At any rate, Sir Philip could discern none.
Many a date was fixed for the old lady's departure, but something always prevented it.
Sixteen years had come and gone between the homecoming of Sir Philip Longridge with his bride and the fair spring morning when Thorley was sent to silence the too-tuneful Margaretta. But during the whole time Lady Longridge had not spent a night under any roof but that of Northbrook Hall. And now she reigned supreme there, for her son was dead, his widow married a second time, and Margaretta lived with her grandmother. There was no grandson, so the baronet of to-day was a far-away cousin, who had a finer place elsewhere, and Lady Longridge occupied her old home, for which she paid a rent which was little more than nominal, but which she made a cause for infinite grumbling.
Of personal property Sir Philip had not much to leave. The two hundred a year belonging to his wife was not doubled by what he could bequeath, but what there was became hers absolutely. He never believed she would marry again, but in case of her so doing, he willed that his mother was to have the guardianship of Margaretta, and he trusted to her to make a suitable provision for his child, knowing that she was well able to do so.
Margaretta was twelve years old when her father died, and Northbrook was no longer even a temporary refuge for the widow and her child.
Sir Philip had never cared to stay long at the Hall, and where he went his wife accompanied him, but the child was usually there under suitable guardianship, her nurse first, then a capable governess being answerable to her parents for their charge's well-doing.
Old Lady Longridge and her daughter-in-law had not become better friends, and the former was altogether more impracticable at seventy-eight than she had been at sixty-five. One roof could not shelter the two, and the young widow was as eager to leave Northbrook as the older was to get rid of her.
Florence Longridge was a proud woman, and it was a trial for her to give up the surroundings she had been used to as Sir Philip's wife, and to live on a narrow income, with a daughter to educate in a manner befitting her birth. She would have died sooner than ask help from her mother-in-law, even had she expected to receive it for the asking. At thirty-four she was almost more beautiful than in her girlish days, and no less attractive for her intellectual gifts.
After two years' widowhood she accidentally met an old friend of her husband, one for whom Sir Philip ever expressed the greatest esteem. He was a man of forty, with wealth, position, and an honoured name. When he asked her to be his wife she hesitated, only on her child's account.