There was no open scandal among
the neighbours; whatever the household may have suspected, very little was
said. Within a year her servants were her slaves. The Rector, it is true,
reproached her for not going to church. She deprecated his indignation,
but didn't go.
Up to the day when we first met with her, her garden-hat in her hand,
reading her telegram by the garden window, she had been eight years
governor of Wanless--and for nearly two of those years alone. For the
first two or three of them Ingram, revelling in his snug ease, with little
to do but devise things--alterations, extensions, ventures into farming,
and the like, which it was her delight to execute--never left the county,
hardly cared to leave the estate. He entertained very sparingly: Chevenix
came once or twice, his own brother, Maxwell Ingram; there were some other
dinner-parties to the countryside, hunt-breakfasts, once a hunt-ball, at
none of which ceremonies did she appear. He endured these wearinesses,
shrugging them away as soon as he could, to hasten from a dinner of dry
toast and knives and forks to his room--the Master's room--where supper,
Sanchia, sweet intimacy awaited him. He spent thus by far the cleanliest
and most sane years of his wayward life.
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