The companionship of Quentin Ogram, a mild idealist, good-naturedly critical of the commonplace, though it often wearied her and irritated her primitive interests, was a civilising influence, the results of which continued to manifest themselves after the baronet's death.

On the aesthetic side Arabella profited not at all; to the beautiful she ever presented a hard insensibility, and in later years she ceased even to affect pleasure in the things of nature or art which people generally admired.

Her flowery and leafy drawing-room indicated no personal taste; it came of a suggestion by her gardener when she converted to her own use the former smoking-room; finding that people admired and thought it original, she made the arrangement a permanence, anxious only that the plants exhibited should be nicer and finer than those possessed by her neighbours.

On the other hand, her moral life had from the first shown capacity of expansion; it held at its service an intellect, of no very fine quality indeed, but acute and energetic.
In all practical affairs she was greatly superior to the average woman, adding to woman's meticulous sense of interest and persistent diplomacy a breadth of view found only in exceptional males; this faculty the circumstances of her life richly fostered, and, by anomaly, advancing age enlarged, instead of contracting, the liberality of her spirit.
After fifty years told, when ordinary mortals have long since given their measure in heart and brain, Lady Ogram steadily advanced.
Solitary possessor of wealth, autocrat over a little world of her own, instead of fossilising in dull dignity, she proved herself receptive of many influences with which the time was fraught.

She cast off beliefs--or what she had held as such--and adopted others; she exchanged old prejudices for new forms of zeal; above all, she chose to be in touch with youth and aspiration rather than with disillusioned or retrospective age.