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other like two children, just as they had done since, in fact, they were children, since the day she was ten and her Uncle Sep had arrived on the doorstep with an eight-year-old beautiful, but motherless, little girl. She herself was an only child, and had lost her own mother when she was but six. It was from that time she had become her father's companion, and she had thought she had wanted no other until she saw Victoria, and from
    71that day they had ceased to be cousins and had become like sisters, passionately close.Bridget got up from the bed and went to the wardrobe, took down a long white lawn petticoat and a blue print dress, and from a chest of drawers took out a pair of white silk stockings. And as she began to dress she said,
    'Let's be serious, Victoria: do you really care for him? I mean, is it not just a passing fancy? He's very charming, he's very handsome and naturally attractive, but what does he do for a living? From what I understand, he hunts and shoots, plays cards and also plays at being a farmer, although from what I've seen of it their farm is a very small one and could be run with a couple of men.''He works on the estate, too, Bridget. I told you so. He goes to an office in Newcastle. I think they used to be in shipping. He mentioned his father has had a number of losses at sea recently, the latest on the London run from the Tyne, you know, with coal.''Oh.' Bridget was pulling her garter over her knee and she twisted it round so that the small silk rosebud should be in the centre as she said, 'If, for instance, you were never to 72see him again, how would you feel about it? I mean, if he were to tell you he was going to marry someone else?'When Victoria did not answer she turned and looked at her where she was now sitting on a pink satin upholstered chair. Her eyes were closed and her chin was almost touching the bare flesh above the square neck of her dress and her voice came as a whisper as she said, I'm not exaggerating but I think I would want to die if ... if he became cool to me now.''Have . . . have you ever felt like this before, dear? I mean, so intense?''No, never. I thought I was in love, you know, with Captain Turner.
    You remember when he used to come to the house to see Uncle Harry, and remember I cried when I heard he was drowned?'Yes, and she, too, had cried when she heard he was drowned. And he hadn't come to the house to see her father, he had come to the house to see her. And she might have married him in the end. Yes, she might have, because her father had liked him. Just a fortnight before her father died he had said to her, 'Robert is a fine fellow. He could give I73you twelve years, but if it were left to me he's the man I would choose to look after you if anything should happen to me.' And it had happened quite suddenly. He had been out to a meeting; and after returning had had a late supper, gone up to bed, and then she had heard him cry out for her; but he was dead before the doctor arrived.She was just on nineteen when, overnight she became a very rich woman: an inheritor of two factories, both of which had grown from cottage industries and had been making good profits over the last forty years; also the owner of properties in a number of the towns around; maybe only cottages in one, but streets in another. Then there was the interest from various industries carried on along both sides of the river. Yes indeed, she had become a rich young woman. But instead of doing what some ladies would have done after a period of mourning, travelled for a time with a suitable companion, then looked around for an equally suitable husband, what Bridget Mordaunt did was no surprise to her close associates; and it hadn't surprised Andrew Kemp, her father's solicitor, nor the accountant, William Bennett, nor
    74the agent, Arthur Fathers, and least of all, not their two old servants Danny and Jessie Croft, for she stepped into her father's shoes and carried on doing exactly what he had done.