 thing to say of anyone I should say that she meant well.
    Ernest had also inherited his mother's love of building castles in air, and
- so I suppose it must be called - her vanity. He was very fond of showing off,
and provided he could attract attention cared little from whom it came, nor what
it was for. He caught up, parrot-like, whatever jargon he heard from his elders
which he thought was the correct thing, and aired it in season and out of season
as though it were his own.
    Miss Pontifex was old enough and wise enough to know that this is the way in
which even the greatest geniuses as a general rule begin to develop and was more
pleased with his receptiveness and reproductiveness than alarmed at the things
he caught and reproduced.
    She saw that he was much attached to herself and trusted to this rather than
to anything else. She saw also that his conceit was not very profound, and that
his fits of self-abasement were as extreme as his exaltation had been. His
impulsiveness, and sanguine trustfulness in any who smiled pleasantly at him, or
indeed who were not absolutely unkind to him made her more anxious about him
than any other point in his character; she saw clearly that he would have to
find himself rudely undeceived many a time and oft, before he would learn to
distinguish friend from foe within reasonable time. It was her perception of
this which led her to take the action which she was so soon called upon to take.
    Her health was for the most part excellent, and she had never had a serious
illness in her life. One morning however soon after Easter, 1850, she awoke
feeling seriously unwell. For some little time there had been a talk of fever in
the neighbourhood, but in those days the precautions that ought to be taken
against the spread of infection were not so well understood as now, and nobody
did anything. In a day or two it became plain that Miss Pontifex had got an
attack of typhoid fever and was dangerously ill. On this she sent off a
messenger to town, and desired him not to return without her lawyer and myself.
    We arrived on the afternoon of the day on which we had been summoned, and
found her still free from delirium: indeed the cheery way in which she received
us made it difficult to think she could be in danger. She at once explained her
wishes, which had reference, as I expected they would, to her nephew, and
repeated the substance of what I have already referred to as her main source of
uneasiness concerning him
