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Miss Carrington admitted her maid to intimacy though not to friendship; a lone woman must of necessity do so. No one else in her life had ever been so deeply within it as Minerva had grown to be during twenty years of service as Miss Carrington’s personal attendant, day and night, in sickness and in health.

Minerva held Miss Carrington at an estimate unlike her friends’ estimate of her; in some ways it was less, in some ways more, accurate.

She realized that Miss Carrington was clever, but she could not gauge her learning as her friends did. She had no way of knowing how witty, how accomplished her mistress was. On the other hand, no one else appreciated so fully her acumen, her efficiency.

With this appreciation, Minerva held her mistress stupid not to have achieved more. What was a maiden lady at nearly seventy, after all? Minerva’s dull sister had done better for herself; she had a husband, the rank of matron. Minerva discounted Miss Carrington’s fierce pride in being Miss Anne Carrington, of the original Cleavedge Carringtons—perhaps because it was too fierce?