But there Lady Strangways paused and looked a little doubtful. Truth to say, she did not think that money had anything to do with the question; she remembered vaguely to have heard that her brother had married an heiress; if so, his only daughter would surely not lack means to train for any career she fancied.
"No, no!" Eleanor exclaimed almost violently, "I could not take money from you--I could not. It will be far better if we never see each other again." And brushing suddenly past the astounded Lady Strangways, Eleanor dashed out of the window and disappeared in a flash round the corner of the house.
"Well, of all the most astonishing girls I ever met, my niece, Margaret Anstruther, is certainly the most astonishing," was Lady Strangways' inward comment as she gazed after Eleanor's flying figure. "She seems to pass through a greater variety of moods in a shorter space of time than any one I ever met. She must be a very uncomfortable person to live with. But what a magnificent voice! What a tremendous gift she has been endowed with!"
But at that point Lady Strangways' musings were interrupted by the belated appearance of her hostess, who came limping with the aid of a stick, and with a slow and painful step into the room.
For, as she had said in her letter to Mr. Anstruther, Mrs. Murray was a martyr to an acute form of rheumatism, and though few people beyond her old and attached servants knew it, she was seldom long out of pain. And, partly on account of her rheumatism, and partly because she was so very deaf, she shunned society, and was rarely to be met with in any one else's house, although she gladly welcomed any one who, as she put it, was kind enough to come and see her. But, on the other hand, she visited a great deal among the poor, not only in her own village, but in the villages for many miles around Windy Gap, and the sight of her fat, sturdy, grey ponies drawing up outside the doors of their cottages was one that never failed to give pleasure to their inmates. She and Lady Strangways had met over a year ago at the bedside of a poor girl who was suffering from an incurable malady, and whose parents rented a cottage on the Wrexley estate. Lady Strangways, who was conscientiously trying, in the intervals of a very full and busy life, to know all her husband's tenants, and who, wherever she went, heard Mrs. Murray's praises sounded, asked at once to be allowed to call on her. Mrs. Murray answered courteously that it would give her great pleasure to know Lady Strangways, but pleaded her infirmities as an excuse for paying any visits herself. In spite of her deafness and her lameness, Mrs. Murray was the soul of cheerfulness. Though she was cut off from much intercourse with her fellow-creatures, she was never at a loss for occupation, and had so many resources within herself that she rarely had a dull moment. For one thing she was an omnivorous reader, and just as Mrs. Danvers never sat down without a piece of knitting in her hand, so Mrs. Murray never sat down without a book.