Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 2.pdf/201

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CONDUCTED BY ""
 * No. 35..
 * SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1869.
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have an income of fifteen thousand a year, and to be her own mistress, would, one would have imagined, have placed Marian Creswell on the pinnacle of worldly success, and rendered her perfectly happy. In the wildest day-dreams of her youth she had never thought of attaining such an income, and such a position as that income afforded her. The pleasures of that position she had only just begun to appreciate; for the life at Woolgreaves, though with its domestic comforts, its carriages and horses and attentive servants, infinitely superior to the life in the Helmingham school-house, had no flavour of the outside world. Her place in her particnlar sphere was very much elevated, but that sphere was as circumscribed as ever. It was not until after her husband's death that Marian felt she had really come into her kingdom. The industrious gentlemen who publish in the newspapers extracts from the last wills and testaments of rich or distinguished persons, thereby planting a weekly dagger in the bosoms of the impecunious, who are led by a strange kind of fascination to read of the enormous sums gathered and bequeathed, had of course not overlooked the testamentary disposition of Mr. Creswell, "of Woolgreaves, and Charleycourt Mills, Brocksopp, cotton-spinner and mill-owner," but had nobly placed him at the head of one of their weekly lists. So that when Mrs. Creswell "and suite," as they were good enough to describe her servants in the local papers, arrived at the great hotel at Turnbridge Wells, the functionaries of that magnificent establishment—great creatures accustomed to associate with the salt of the earth, and having a proper contempt, which they do not suffer themselves to disguise, for the ordinary traveller—were fain to smile on her, and to give her such a welcome as only the knowledge of the extent to which they intended mulcting her in the bill could possibly have extorted from them. The same kindly feeling towards her animated all the sojourners in that pleasant watering-place. No sooner her name appeared in the Strangers' List, no sooner had it been buzzed about that she was the Mrs. Creswell, whose husband had recently died, leaving her so wonderfully well off, than she became an object of intense popular interest.

Two ladies of title—the widow of a viscount (Irish), and the wife of a baronet (English), insolvent, and at that moment in exile in the island of Coll, there hiding from his creditors—left cards on her, and earnestly desired the pleasure of her acquaintance. The roistering youth of the place, the East India colonels, the gay dogs superannuated from the government offices, the retired business men, who, in the fallow leisure of their lives, did what they would—all looked en her with longing eyes, and set their wits to work on all sorts of schemes to compass knowing her. Over laymen the clergy have a great advantage, their mission is in itself sufficient introduction, and lists of all the local charities, district churches to be erected, parsonages to be repaired, and schools to be established, had been presented by those interested in them to the rich widow in person before she had been forty-eight hours in the place.

It was very pleasant, this popularity, this being sought after and courted and