She eked out a small inheritance by staying with relatives.  Mr. Britling’s earlier memories presented her as a slender young woman of thirty, with a nose upon which small boys were forbidden to comment.  Yet she commented upon it herself, and called his attention to its marked resemblance to that of the great Duke of Wellington.  “He was, I am told,” said Cousin Wilshire to the attentive youth, “a great friend of your great-grandmother’s.  At any rate, they were contemporaries.  Since then this nose has been in the family.  He would have been the last to draw a veil over it, but other times, other manners.  ‘Publish,’ he said, ‘and be damned.’”

She had a knack of exasperating Mr. Britling’s father, a knack which to a less marked degree she also possessed in relation to the son.  But Mr. Britling senior never acquired the art of disregarding her.  Her method—­if one may call the natural expression of a personality a method—­was an invincibly superior knowledge, a firm and ill-concealed belief that all statements made in her hearing were wrong and most of them absurd, and a manner calm, assured, restrained.  She may have been born with it; it is on record that at the age of ten she was pronounced a singularly trying child.  She may have been born with the air of thinking the doctor a muff and knowing how to manage all this business better.  Mr. Britling had known her only in her ripeness.  As a boy, he had enjoyed her confidences—­about other people and the general neglect of her advice.  He grew up rather to like her—­most people rather liked her—­and to attach a certain importance to her unattainable approval.  She was sometimes kind, she was frequently absurd....

With very little children she was quite wise and Jolly....

So she circulated about a number of houses which at any rate always welcomed her coming.  In the opening days of each visit she performed marvels of tact, and set a watch upon her lips.  Then the demons of controversy and dignity would get the better of her.  She would begin to correct, quietly but firmly, she would begin to disapprove of the tone and quality of her treatment.  It was quite common for her visit to terminate in speechless rage both on the side of host and of visitor.  The remarkable thing was that this speechless rage never endured.  Though she could exasperate she could never offend.  Always after an interval during which she was never mentioned, people began to wonder how Cousin Jane was getting on....  A tentative correspondence would begin, leading slowly up to a fresh invitation.

She spent more time in Mr. Britling’s house than in any other.  There was a legend that she had “drawn out” his mind, and that she had “stood up” for him against his father.  She had certainly contradicted quite a number of those unfavourable comments that fathers are wont to make about their sons.  Though certainly she contradicted everything.  And Mr. Britling hated to think of her knocking about alone in boarding-houses and hydropathic establishments with only the most casual chances for contradiction.