his time, would be a burden to him, and she plainly said that Mr
Finn had better not come to Matching at present. 'There are old
occasions,' she said, 'which will enable you to bear with me as
you will with your butler or your groom, but you are not as yet
quite able to make yourself happy with company.' This he bore
with perfect equanimity, and then, as it were, handed over his
daughter to Mrs Finn's care.

Very quickly there came a close intimacy between Mrs Finn and
Lady Mary. For a day or two the elder woman, though the place she
filled was one of absolute confidence, rather resisted than
encouraged the intimacy. She always remembered that the girl was
the daughter of a great duke, and that her position in the house
had sprung from circumstances which would not, perhaps, in the
eyes of the world at large, have recommended her for such a
friendship. She knew,--the reader may possibly know--that nothing
had ever been purer, nothing more disinterested than her
friendship. But she knew also--no one knew better--that the
judgement of men and women does not always run parallel with
facts. She entertained, too, a conviction with regard to herself,
that hard words and hard judgements were to be expected from the
world,--and were to be accepted by her without any strong feeling
of injustice,--because she had been elevated by chance to the
possession of more good things than she merited. She weighed all
this with a very fine balance, and even after the encouragement
she had received from the Duke, was intent on confining herself to
some position about the girl inferior to that which such a friend
as Lady Cantrip might have occupied. But the girl's manner and the
girl's speech about her own mother, overcame her. It was the
unintentional revelation of the Duchess's constant reference to