prosperity, she had not been very careful of other women's feelings, and she did not find them in her trouble inclined to return good for evil. Very few ladies called upon her. The gentlemen she met treated her with restraint and evident disapproval, or else with a sympathy that was still more painful and offensive.
It was Jane Bashpoole's hour of revenge, and she used it pitilessly against her rival. The story of the sapphire necklace, set in Miss Bashpoole's own designing, passed from lip to lip. "Poor Cousin Anthony" was the subject of her commiseration, and without a dissenting feminine vote Eleanor was adjudged unworthy of the love and position which he had given her. And though Squire Bashpoole said few words about the matter, every single word, and every shrug of his broad shoulders, condemned his nephew's wife. And the country gentlefolks wondered "how Aske could expect anything else from people who had only their money to recommend them, and who had not been taught through generations of culture the self-restraints of good birth and good breeding."
A month after the quarrel began, Aske left
