Ombra

Mrs. Anderson stayed with her niece for a very long time; naturally her presence was necessary till Kate married—and then she returned to receive the pair when they came back after their honeymoon. But when the honeymoon was long over Mrs. Anderson still stayed, and was more firmly established at Langton-Courtenay than in her daughter’s great house, where old Lady Eldridge lived with the young people, and where sometimes there were shadows visible, even on the clear sky of prosperity and well-doing. Ombra was Ombra still, even when she was happy—a nature often sweet, and never intentionally unkind, but apt to become self-absorbed, and disposed to be cloudy. Her mother never uttered a word of complaint, and was very happy to pay her a visit now and then; but her home gradually became fixed with her adopted child. She and old Francesca faded and grew old together—that is to say, Mrs. Anderson grew older, while Francesca bloomed perennial, no more aged at seventy, to all appearance, than she had been at fifty. Never was such an invaluable old woman in a house. She was the joy of all the young generation for twenty years, and her stories grew more full of detail and more lavishly decorated with circumstances every day.

There is not much more to add. If we went further on in the history, should we not have new threads to take up, perhaps new complications to unravel, new incidents with every new hour? For life does not sit still and fold its hands in happiness any more than in sorrow—something must always be happening; and when Providence does not send events, we take care to make them. But Providence happily provided the events in the house of Kate and Bertie. He made an admirable Prince Consort. He went into Parliament, and took up politics warmly, and finally got up to a secondary seat in the Cabinet, which Kate was infinitely proud of. She made him rich and important—which, after all, as she said, were things which any cheese-monger’s daughter could have done, who had money enough. But he made her, what few people could have done, the wife of a Cabinet Minister. When the Right Honourable H. Hardwick came down to Westerton, the town took off its hat to him, and considered itself honoured as no Mr. Courtenay of Langton-Courtenay had ever honoured it. Thus things went well with those who aimed well, which does not always happen, though sometimes it is permitted us for the consolation of the race.

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Ice.