My Lady Bountiful by Fred M. White

Kathleen had slipped out into the garden, full of the plot of her new story. Major Wiltshire had given her the very detail she had wanted. Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram was delightful; such a charming and picturesque central figure for a story. But, of course, 'my lady bountiful' had to be beaten and mildly humiliated in the long run, and here it would be unwise to outrage the conventional by any 'stagey' trick. The humbling process must be both probable and natural. And here Major Wiltshire had kindly provided the very thing.

Kathleen was quite an artist in her way, though she had none of the shibboleths of the superior critic at her finger ends. She had crude ideas as to introspection and restraint, and all that kind of thing, but she possessed feeling, and an eye for colour--there was nothing of the fretwork novelist about her. It seemed to her that the probable action of the Court of Chancery fitted in splendidly. She had followed Major Wiltshire carefully, and he appeared to have a very good case. If these things were heirlooms, then Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram had no more right to sell them than the estate itself.