The surviving sister was now rather
over sixty, and her income was very much smaller than it had been, but it
never even occurred to her to try and sell what had become to her a place
of mingled painful and happy memories.
In every civilised country a village is the world in little, though it
is always surprising to the student of human nature to find how many
distinct types are gathered within its narrow bounds. And if this is
true of village communities all over Europe, it is peculiarly true of
an English village.
Miss Pendarth was a clever woman. Too clever to be really happy in the
life to which she had condemned herself. She had been born many years too
early to follow up any of the various paths now open to the intelligent,
educated woman. Yet she belonged, by birth and upbringing, to that
age-long tradition of command which perhaps counts for most of all to the
one class which has remained in England much the same for generations.
The Pendarths had once been very great people in Cornwall, and long
records of the family are to be found in all county histories. Olivia
Pendarth was wordlessly very proud of their lineage, and it is no
exaggeration to say that she would have died rather than in any way
disgrace it.
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