The Duke of Brexwell sent his three old aunts to Cold Harbor Farm in the steward's cart, with one trunk between them. Then he stepped down from his own carriage in the lane and held out a sealed note in his white glove, as if it might soil him.
Maud Lowry, who had buried her husband six weeks before, reached out her bare hand and took it, and read it in the rain: four shillings a week until Lady Day.When she looked up, the Duke was back in his carriage, and it was turning round in her yard without waiting for an answer.The old ladies stood in the mud where the cart had left them, arm in arm in faded silks and bonnets gone soft in the wet. And they looked at the farmhouse door, and not at the carriage going away. The eldest stepped forward, tall and gray, with her chin up the way a woman holds it when it is the only thing she has left to hold."We shall not be a trouble," she said.And then her knees went quite gently, and she folded down onto the wet step like a dropped shawl.Maud caught her under the arms before her head struck the stone. She was light, much too light, and her cheek was cold as a plate. Her sisters cried out and came stumbling through the mud, and together they carried her in through the door and laid her in the only chair."She has not eaten since yesterday noon," said the youngest, pulling off her own wet gloves to chafe her sister's hands. "They forgot to send up a tray. They were packing the rooms."