Years afterward a rumour reached his people that he had married and died out there, leaving a widow and an only son; but this rumour had not been verified, as by that time his father and uncle were dead, and his cousins were reigning in his stead; and it was hardly to be expected that the proud Miss Farringdon would take much trouble concerning the woman whom her weak-kneed kinsman had preferred to herself.
William Farringdon left all his property and his share in the works to his niece Maria, as some reparation for the insult which his disinherited son had offered to her; John left his large fortune between his two daughters, as he never had a son; so Maria and Anne Farringdon lived at the Willows, and carried on the Osierfield with the help of Richard Smallwood, who had been the general manager of the collieries and ironworks belonging to the firm in their father's time, and knew as much about iron (and most other things) as he did.

Maria was a good woman of business, and she and Richard between them made money as fast as it had been made in the days of William and John Farringdon.

Anne, on the contrary, was a meek and gentle soul, who had no power of governing but a perfect genius for obedience, and who was always engaged on the Herculean task of squaring the sternest dogmas with the most indulgent practices.
Even in the early days of this history the Miss Farringdons were what is called "getting on"; but the Willows was, nevertheless, not without a youthful element in it.

Close upon a dozen years ago the two sisters had adopted the orphaned child of a second cousin, whose young widow had died in giving birth to a posthumous daughter; and now Elisabeth Farringdon was the light of the good ladies' eyes, though they would have considered it harmful to her soul to let her have an inkling of this fact.
She was not a pretty little girl, which was a source of much sorrow of heart to her; and she was a distinctly clever little girl, of which she was utterly unconscious, it being an integral part of Miss Farringdon's system of education to imbue the young with an overpowering sense of their own inferiority and unworthiness.

During the first decade of her existence Elisabeth used frequently and earnestly to pray that her hair might become golden and her eyes brown; but as on this score the heavens remained as brass, and her hair continued dark brown and her eyes blue-gray, she changed her tactics, and confined her heroine-worship to ladies of this particular style of colouring; which showed that, even at the age of ten, Elisabeth had her full share of adaptability.
One day, when walking with Miss Farringdon to chapel, Elisabeth exclaimed, _a propos_ of nothing but her own meditations, "Oh! Cousin Maria, I do wish I was pretty!" Most people would have been too much afraid of the lady of the Willows to express so frivolous a desire in her august hearing; but Elisabeth was never afraid of anybody, and that, perhaps, was one of the reasons why her severe kinswoman loved her so well.
"That is a vain wish, my child.