Hannah Tebbuts was sister to Orlando's mother. In conjunction with another sister, also unmarried, she had for several years kept a select seminary for young ladies in a little town in one of the midland counties. When her sister married Mr. Larkins that gentleman had not risen to fame and fortune. He was still brooding over the Pill that was ultimately to make his name known to the ends of the earth. Even then Hannah Tebbuts saw but little of her married sister, and she saw still less of her when Mrs. Larkins went to live in a big mansion in the outskirts of London.
By and by Mrs. Larkins died, and after that a dozen years passed away without Miss Hannah catching even a passing glimpse of her rich relations in London. But at the end of that time there came a message for her to go up to town with the least possible delay. Her famous brother-in-law was dangerously ill, and he had asked that she might be sent for to go and nurse him. Miss Hannah was less loath to go because she had lately lost the sister with whom she had lived for so many years, and had, in consequence, given up her school. Once in London, there she remained till Mr. Larkins died. His illness was a long and tedious one, but through it all Miss Hannah nursed her brother-in-law with the most devoted care and attention. As a reward for her services, and a token of the high esteem in which he held her, the sick man, by a codicil added to his will only a few days before his death, bequeathed to her the very handsome legacy of twenty thousand pounds.
Never was a simple-minded woman more puzzled what to do with a legacy. Her tastes were so inexpensive, and her mode of life so quiet and sedate, that she could find no use for the money. All she could do was to place the amount in the hands of her nephew, begging him to allow her a hundred a year out of it, and invest the remainder for her in any way he might think best.
Miss Tebbuts had never been handsome, but no one who studied her face could doubt her amiability and good-temper. There was nothing fashionable, nothing modish, about her. Her gown was after a style that had been in vogue some dozen years previously. She wore elaborate caps, and little sausage-like curls, now beginning to turn gray. She was of a retiring disposition, and her greatest trouble was having to fill the position of hostess at Bourbon House to the numerous strangers her nephew took there. Mr. Wellclose was wrong when he surmised that she might possibly be the victim of some early disappointment. Miss Tebbuts had never had an offer in her life, and if she had ever entertained any hopes in that direction she had trampled them under foot long ago, so that nothing was now left of them save a faint, sweet memory, like the sweetness of crushed flowers exhaled from a _pot pourri_. And this was the lady to whom John Marmaduke Lorrimore began to pay very marked attention.
