From Miss Vavasor’s Cornelius had been invited to several other houses, and the consequence was that he looked from an ever growing height upon his own family, judging not one of them fit for the grand company to which his merits, unappreciated at home, had introduced him. He began to take private lessons in dancing and singing. As he possessed a certain natural grace, invisible when he was out of humour, but always appearing when he wanted to please, and a certain facility of imitation as well, he was soon able to dance excellently, and sing with more or less dullness a few songs of the sort fashionable at the time. But he took so little delight in music or singing for its own sake that in any allusion to his sister’s practicing he would call it an infernal row.

Cornelius was inwardly astonished, even a little annoyed, at the seemingly favourable impression made by his family, Hester in particular, upon one in whose judgment he had placed unquestioned confidence. And he did not conceal from Vavasor his dissent from his opinion of them, for he felt that his friend’s admiration of them gave him the advantage to be seen as a freethinker, as one who disdained what his friend admired.

“My mother’s the best of the lot,” he said. “She’s the best woman in the world, I do believe. But she’s nobody except at home—don’t you know? Why, just look at her and your aunt together! Pooh!”

What a fool! said Vavasor to himself, but he left his thought unsaid. He went on to give him a lecture, well meant and shallow, on what was good in a woman. In his view, not only Cornelius’s mother, but Hester herself, possessed qualities which approached this strange virtue.

“Oh, she’s a good girl—of her sort—Hester is,” Cornelius continued, modifying his opposition somewhat. “I don’t need you to tell me that. But she’s too serious. Half an hour in one of her moods is enough to destroy one’s peace of mind forever. And there’s no telling when the fit may take her.”

Vavasor laughed. But he said to himself what a woman might be made of her! To him she seemed fit—with a little developing assistance—to grace the best society in the world. It was not polish she needed, but experience and insight, he thought. He would have her learn to look on the world and its affairs as they who viewed them under the artificial light of fashion. Thus Vavasor almost immediately conceived the ambition of having a personal hand in the worldly education of this young woman, grooming her to shine as she deserved in the fashionable circles of the city—the only circles worth anyone’s while. Through his aunt he could gain Hester’s entrance where he pleased. Alongside her and her family, he seemed to himself a man of power and influence.

I wonder how Jesus Christ would carry himself in Mayfair. Perhaps he would not enter it. Perhaps he would only call to his own to come out of it, and turn away to go down among the moneylenders and sinners of the east end. I am only wondering.