At the moment when Sir Mowbray's letter reached her, Mrs. Elsmere
was playing a leading part in the small society to which circumstances
had consigned her. She was the personal friend of half the masters
and their wives, and of at least a quarter of the school, while in
the little town which stretched up the hill covered by the new
school buildings, she was the helper, gossip, and confident of half
the parish. Her vast hats, strange in fashion and inordinate in
brim, her shawls of many colors, hitched now to this side now to
that, her swaying gait and looped-up skirts, her spectacles, and
the dangling parcels in which her soul delighted, were the outward
signs of a personality familiar to all. For under those checked
shawls which few women passed without an inward marvel, there beat
one of the warmest hearts that ever animated mortal clay, and the
prematurely, wrinkled face, with its small quick eyes and shrewd
indulgent mouth, bespoke a nature as responsive as it was vigorous.

Their owner vas constantly in the public eye. Her house, during
the hours at any rate in which her boy was at school, was little
else than a halting place between two journeys. Visits to the poor,
long watches by the sick; committees, in which her racy breadth of
character gave her always an important place; discussions with the
vicar, arguments with the curates, a chat with this person and a
walk with that--these were the incidents and occupations which
filled her day. Life was delightful to her; action, energy,
influence, were delightful to her; she could only breathe freely
in the very thick of the stirring, many-colored tumult of existence.
Whether it was a pauper in the workhouse, or boys from the school,
or a girl caught in the tangle of a love-affair, it was all the
same to Mrs. Elsmere. Everything moved her, everything appealed
to her. Her life was a perpetual giving forth, and such was the