One may see that all these self-inquiries tended Rubb-wards. I do not mean that they were made with any direct intention on her part to reconcile herself to a marriage with Mr Samuel Rubb, or that she even thought of such an event as probable. He had said nothing to her to justify such thought, and as yet she knew but very little of him. But they all went to reconcile her to that sphere of life which her brother Tom had chosen, and which her brother Walter had despised. They taught her to believe that a firm footing below was better than what might, after a life’s struggle, be found to be but a false footing above. And they were brightened undoubtedly by an idea that some marriage in which she could love and be loved was possible to her below, though it would hardly be possible to her above.

Her only disputant on the subject was Miss Baker, and she startled that lady much by the things which she said. Now, with Miss Baker, not to be a lady was to be nothing. It was her weakness, and I may also say her strength. Her ladyhood was of that nature that it took no soil from outer contact. It depended, even within her own bosom, on her own conduct solely, and in no degree on the conduct of those among whom she might chance to find herself. She thought it well to pass her evenings with Mr Stumfold’s people, and he at any rate had the manners of a gentleman. So thinking, she felt in no wise disgraced because the coachbuilder’s wife was a vulgar, illiterate woman. But there were things, not bad in themselves, which she herself would never have done, because she was a lady. She would have broken her heart rather than marry a man who was not a gentleman. It was not unlady-like to eat cold mutton, and she ate it. But she would have shuddered had she been called on to eat any mutton with a steel fork. She had little generous ways with her, because they were the ways of ladies, and she paid for them from off her own back and out of her own dish. She would not go out to tea in a street cab, because she was a lady and alone; but she had no objection to walk, with her servant with her if it was dark. No wonder that such a woman was dismayed by the philosophy of Miss Mackenzie.

And yet they had been brought together by much that was alike in their dispositions. Miss Mackenzie had now been more than six months an inhabitant of Littlebath, and six months at such places is enough for close intimacies. They were both quiet, conscientious, kindly women, each not without some ambition of activity, but each a little astray as to the way in which that activity should be shown. They were both alone in the world, and Miss Baker during the last year or two had become painfully so from the fact of her estrangement from her old friend Miss Todd. They both wished to be religious, having strong faith in the need of the comfort of religion; but neither of them were quite satisfied with the Stumfoldian creed. They had both, from conscience, eschewed the vanities of the world; but with neither was her conscience quite satisfied that such eschewal was necessary, and each regretted to be losing pleasures which might after all be innocent.