ne must keep the two worlds distinct in practice: Brethren before our
Maker, we yet play the social game according to its rules. After the
first, she relegated the matter to a high shelf. She had not made much
case of Judith's friendship, she made scarcely more of her enmity. Her
life was full of other interests, and, as she mingled less and less
with the village, the reminder of Judith's sentiments toward her
hardly recurred often enough to constitute an element in her
consciousness. The truth is that as Judith dropped out of her
existence in the character of one who could interfere with it, she
disliked her less. Sometimes the flushed face with its assumed
haughtiness, "cutting her dead," (Celia, with some idea, perhaps, of
doing for her part a Christian's duty, continued to bow as if unaware
of the insult intended her) smote her with a sense of pity at the evil
passions hardening that really beautiful face. The Comptons' idea that
they might have to give up the village as a summering place was
forgotten. When a little chafed by some noisy exhibition of the Brays'
vulgarity, Celia used to say to herself hopefully that no doubt Judith
would in time marry and go to live elsewhere. She would have been
amazed to discover that she was herself directly concerned with
Judith's singleness. Judith, the very type of whose charms proclaimed
her passionate temperament, had never among her adorers seen one she
was sure would have been felt good enough for Celia. There was a story
passed along in confidence--how things which the persons concerned in
them never breathe come to be generally known is a mystery--that Celia
would never marry, because the one she should have married, renounced
on account of some deadly habit of a drug, was off somewhere at the
other end of the world, fighting his weakness, or, there were those
who said, having given up the fight. Judith, hearing this long before,
had considered the circumstances with an aching sympathy, mingled with
awe. She knew she could never have done it. If she had cared for the
man,--the most brilliant man before, and now the most unhappy,--she
pictured him handsome as a hero of Byron's,--she would have had to
cling to him and go down into the depths together. But spinsterhood
had acquired an effect of fineness for her from the study of Celia,
with the destruction of her happiness so perfectly concealed that one
could detect it by no sign, unless that air of detachment, sometimes,
a