the rule of life, and that her own trifling personality counted for
nothing, or next to nothing, in its steady progress. Her name was Mary
too--always called "little Mary" as having once been little, and not yet
very much in the matter of size. She was one of the pleasantest things
to look at of all the pretty things in Lady Mary's rooms, and she had the
most sheltered, peaceful, and pleasant life that could be conceived. The
only little thorn in her pillow was, that whereas in the novels, of which
she read a great many, the heroines all go and pay visits and have
adventures, she had none, but lived constantly at home. There was
something much more serious in her life, had she known, which was that
she had nothing, and no power of doing anything for herself; that she had
all her life been accustomed to a modest luxury which would make poverty
very hard to her; and that Lady Mary was over eighty, and had made no
will. If she did not make any will, her property would all go to her
grandson, who was so rich already that her fortune would be but as a drop
in the ocean to him; or to some great-grandchildren of whom she knew very
little,--the descendants of a daughter long ago dead who had married an
Austrian, and who were therefore foreigners both in birth and name. That
she should provide for little Mary was therefore a thing which nature
demanded, and which would hurt nobody. She had said so often; but she
deferred the doing of it as a thing for which there was no hurry. For why
should she die? There seemed no reason or need for it. So long as she
lived, nothing could be more sure, more happy and serene, than little
Mary's life; and why should she die? She did not perhaps put this into
words; but the meaning of her smile, and the manner in which she put
aside every suggestion about the chances of the hereafter away from her,
said it more clearly than words. It was not that she had any
superstitious fear about the making of a will. When the doctor or the
vicar or her man of business, the only persons who ever talked to her on
the subject, ventured periodically to refer to it, she assented