, kept her backward in sex-perception, gave her a faint,
unconscious contempt for men--creatures always at the beck and call of
her smile, and so easily disquieted by a little frown--gave her also a
secret yearning for companions of her own gender. Any girl or woman that
she did chance to meet always took a fancy to her, because she was so
nice to them, which made the transitory nature of these friendships
tantalizing. She was incapable of jealousies or backbiting. Let men
beware of such--there is coiled in their fibre a secret fascination!

Gyp's moral and spiritual growth was not the sort of subject that Winton
could pay much attention to. It was pre-eminently a matter one did not
talk about. Outward forms, such as going to church, should be preserved;
manners should be taught her by his own example as much as possible;
beyond this, nature must look after things. His view had much real
wisdom. She was a quick and voracious reader, bad at remembering what
she read; and though she had soon devoured all the books in Winton's
meagre library, including Byron, Whyte-Melville, and Humboldt's "Cosmos,"
they had not left too much on her mind. The attempts of her little
governess to impart religion were somewhat arid of result, and the
interest of the vicar, Gyp, with her instinctive spice of scepticism soon
put into the same category as the interest of all the other males she
knew. She felt that he enjoyed calling her "my dear" and patting her
shoulder, and that this enjoyment was enough reward for his exertions.

Tucked away in that little old dark manor house, whose stables alone were
up to date--three hours from London, and some thirty miles from The Wash,
it must be confessed that her upbringing lacked modernity. About twice a
year, Winton took her up to town to stay with his unmarried sister
Rosamund in Curzon Street. Those weeks, if they did nothing else,
increased her natural taste for charming clothes, fortified her teeth,
and fostered her passion for music and the theatre. But the two main
nourishments of the modern girl--discussion and games--she lacked
utterly. Moreover, those years of her life from fifteen to nineteen were
before the social resurrection of 1906, and the world still crawled like
a winter fly on a window-pane. Winton was a Tory, Aunt Rosamund a Tory,
everybody round her a Tory. The only spiritual development she underwent
all those years of her girlhood was through her headlong love for