'She'll be seen by Philip like as if she were a nightmare apparition of his undertaker's wraith,' Captain Con said to Jane, when recommending his cousin to her charitable nature, after he had taken lodgings at a farmhouse near Mrs.Lackstraw's model farm Woodside on the hills.

'Barring the dress,' as he added, some such impression of her frigid mournfulness might have struck a recumbent invalid.

Jane acknowledged it, and at first induced her aunt to join her in the daily walk of half a mile to sit with him.

Mrs.Lackstraw was a very busy lady at her farm; she was often summoned to London by her intuition of John's wish to have her presiding at table for the entertainment of his numerous guests; she confessed that she supervised the art of nursing better than she practised it, and supervision can be done at a distance if the subordinate is properly attentive to the rules we lay down, as Jane appeared to be.

So Jane was left to him.