Time showed that Mr. Torkingham's surmises were correct.

During the long weeks of early summer, through which the young man still
lay imprisoned, if not within his own chamber, within the limits of the
house and garden, news reached him that Sir Blount's mismanagement and
eccentric behaviour were resulting in serious consequences to Lady
Constantine; nothing less, indeed, than her almost complete
impoverishment. His personalty was swallowed up in paying his debts, and
the Welland estate was so heavily charged with annuities to his distant
relatives that only a mere pittance was left for her. She was reducing
the establishment to the narrowest compass compatible with decent
gentility. The horses were sold one by one; the carriages also; the
greater part of the house was shut up, and she resided in the smallest
rooms. All that was allowed to remain of her former contingent of male
servants were an odd man and a boy. Instead of using a carriage she now
drove about in a donkey-chair, the said boy walking in front to clear the
way and keep the animal in motion; while she wore, so his informants
reported, not an ordinary widow's cap or bonnet, but something even
plainer, the black material being drawn tightly round her face, giving
her features a small, demure, devout cast, very pleasing to the eye.

'Now, what's the most curious thing in this, Mr. San Cleeve,' said Sammy
Blore, who, in calling to inquire after Swithin's health, had imparted
some of the above particulars, 'is that my lady seems not to mind being a
pore woman half so much as we do at seeing her so. 'Tis a wonderful
gift, Mr. San Cleeve, wonderful, to be able to guide yerself, and not let
loose yer soul in blasting at such a misfortune. I should go and drink
neat regular, as soon as I had swallered my breakfast, till my innerds
was burnt out like a' old copper, if it had happened to me; but my lady's
plan is best. Though I only guess how one feels in such losses, to be
sure, for I never had nothing to lose.' Meanwhile the observatory was not forgotten; nor that visitant of
singular shape and habits which had appeared in the sky from no one knew
whence, trailing its luminous streamer, and proceeding on its way in the
face of a wondering world, till it should choose to vanish as suddenly as
it had come.