idow, on her side, dilating
on the initiations thus opened up to her, had been splendid to her young
friend, over the way she was made free of the greatest houses--the way,
especially when she did the dinner-tables, set out so often for twenty,
she felt that a single step more would transform her whole social
position. On its being asked of her then if she circulated only in a
sort of tropical solitude, with the upper servants for picturesque
natives, and on her having to assent to this glance at her limitations,
she had found a reply to the girl's invidious question. "You've no
imagination, my dear!"--that was because a door more than half open to
the higher life couldn't be called anything but a thin partition. Mrs.
Jordan's imagination quite did away with the thickness.

Our young lady had not taken up the charge, had dealt with it
good-humouredly, just because she knew so well what to think of it. It
was at once one of her most cherished complaints and most secret supports
that people didn't understand her, and it was accordingly a matter of
indifference to her that Mrs. Jordan shouldn't; even though Mrs. Jordan,
handed down from their early twilight of gentility and also the victim of
reverses, was the only member of her circle in whom she recognised an
equal. She was perfectly aware that her imaginative life was the life in
which she spent most of her time; and she would have been ready, had it
been at all worth while, to contend that, since her outward occupation
didn't kill it, it must be strong indeed. Combinations of flowers and
green-stuff, forsooth! What _she_ could handle freely, she said to
herself, was combinations of men and women. The only weakness in her
faculty came from the positive abundance of her contact with the human
herd; this was so constant, it had so the effect of cheapening her
privilege, that there were long stretches in which inspiration,
divination and interest quite dropped. The great thing was the flashes,
the quick revivals, absolute accidents all, and neither to be counted on
nor to be resisted. Some one had only sometimes to put in a penny for a
stamp and the whole thing was upon her. She was so absurdly constructed
that these were literally the moments that made up--made up for the long
stiffness of sitting there in the stocks, made up for the cunning
hostility of Mr. Buckton and the importunate sympathy of the
counter-clerk, made up for the daily deadly flourishy letter