thing was improper and absurd, a piece of sentiment, sickly senility,
unlike Lord Dannisburgh. Also that Percy had been guilty of excessive
folly.

To which Lady Dacier nodded her assent, remarking, 'The woman is on her
mettle. From what I've heard of her, she's not a woman to stick at
trifles. She'll take it as a sort of ordeal by touch, and she 'll come.'

They joined in abusing Percy, who had driven away to another part of the
country. Lord Creedmore, the heir of the house, was absent, hunting in
America, or he might temporarily have been taken into favour by contrast.
Ultimately they agreed that the woman must be allowed to enter the house,
but could not be received. The earl was a widower; his mother managed
the family, and being hard to convince, she customarily carried her
point, save when it involved Percy's freedom of action. She was one of
the veterans of her sex that age to toughness; and the 'hysterical fuss'
she apprehended in the visit of this woman to Lord Dannisburgh's death-
bed and body, did not alarm her. For the sake of the household she
determined to remain, shut up in her room. Before night the house was
empty of any members of the family excepting old Lady Dacier and the
outstretched figure on the bed.

Dacier fled to escape the hearing of the numberless ejaculations re-
awakened in the family by his uncle's extraordinary dying request. They
were an outrage to the lady, of whom he could now speak as a privileged
champion; and the request itself had an air of proving her stainless, a
white soul and efficacious advocate at the celestial gates (reading the
mind of the dying man). So he thought at one moment: he had thought so
when charged with the message to her; had even thought it a natural wish
that she should look once on the face she would see no more, and say