A romance of real life! It was, indeed, a disappointment and loss to the whole country when the great Piercey case was over. Even old gentlemen who were supposed to care for nothing but politics and the price of stocks, threw down the _Times_ with an angry exclamation that there was nothing in it, the first dull morning or two after that case was concluded. Thus Patty was a benefactor to her kind without any intention of being so. People were generally sorry for the Pierceys, who, there was no doubt, had a right to be disappointed and even angry to see their ancient patrimony thus swept away into the hands of a stranger. For nobody entertained the slightest doubt that Patty would marry and set up a new family out of the ashes of the old. And why shouldn’t she? the people cried who knew nothing about it. Was it not the very principle of the British constitution to be always taking in new blood to revive the old? Was not the very peerage constantly leavened by this process; new lords being made out of cotton and coals and beer and all the industries to give solidity to the lessening phalanx of the sons of the Crusaders? Old Sir Francis Piercey, who was the plaintiff, was well enough off to pay his costs, and he ought to be able at his age to reconcile himself to the loss! To be sure, there was his son, a very distinguished soldier. Well! he had better marry the young widow, everybody said, and settle the matter so.
The county people did not, however, take this view. They were wroth beyond expression on the subject of this intruder into their midst. Nobody had called upon her but Lady Hartmore, whose indignation knew no bounds; who had never forgiven her husband, and never would forgive him, she declared, for having betrayed her into that visit. “But to be sure I never should have known what the minx was if I had not seen her!” that lady said. Patty was completely tabooed on every side. Even the rector turned off the highroad when he saw her carriage approaching, and ran by an improvised path over the fields not to meet her. Wherever she might find companions or friends it was evidently not to be in her own district. Her old friends were servants in one great house or another, or the wives of cottagers and labourers; and Patty was altogether unaware of their existence. When she drove about the county, as she did very much and often in the impulse of her triumph, her eyes met only faces which were very familiar but which she would not know, or faces glimpsed at afar off which would not know her. She was undisputed mistress of Greyshott, and all its revenues and privileges. All the neighbouring land belonged to her, and almost every house in the village; but except to Miss Hewitt, her aunt, and the servants of the house, and, occasionally, some much-mistaken woman from one of the cottages, who felt emboldened to make a petition to the lady of Greyshott on the score of having been at school with her, Patty spoke to nobody, or rather had nobody to speak to, which is a better statement of the case.