d after
her departure, she and her errand; the brother and the other man, as
far as circumstances permitted, wedging in good words for her, with
half-ironical good-humor.

The small, withered gentlewoman in the rocking-chair said, "I fear you
will be obliged to call upon her, Celia, after all."

Celia somberly raged. "Is one to be forced to know people whom it
gives one goose-flesh to hear mentioned? The Brays have made me feel
as if boiled cabbage were reeking from every house in the village, and
I am to associate with them quite as with people I like? Voluntary
intercourse should signify, after all, some degree of regard, and I am
to pretend--No! I will not admit the legitimacy of any tyranny which
could so coerce me! I will be civil to her every time my bad luck
throws us together, but seek her out I will not."

At the last of the season, nevertheless, Mrs. Compton's card and
Celia's were left at the Brays', their call falling upon a day when
Judith was far from home, to the knowledge of every soul in the place,
Judith truly believed. Celia left on the day after, with the
comfortable sense of having done her duty and deserved the crumb of
favor vouchsafed her by fate.

She supposed, when she came back the following year, that her relation
with the Brays was now definitely established: one formal call from
each party during the season. But the first time she met Judith, she
perceived instantly that all was changed. She knew she had made an
enemy. How the revulsion had come about was never clear: whether owing
to the mere ripening of age--Judith was now twenty-four or -five,
Celia five or six years older--or the souring of a despised
prepossession, or the intimacy with Jess, which began at about this
time. Celia's punctilious bow met the response of as much petty
rudeness as could be concentrated into a lifting of the chin and a
stare. "Very well," she said to herself stonily, "if you prefer it so,
it is by far the most agreeable to me."

It was not, altogether; that is, not all the time. We are seldom of a
piece, and a part of Celia was chafed, and now and then saddened, by
the sense of having brought about anything so unbeautiful as this
hate. She could not at all moments clear her conscience of blame, and
had pangs of regret--too honest with herself, however, not to know
that if all were still to do, she should do the same. For another part
of Celia, child of a worldly clan, felt itself eminently justified.
O