e home of her childhood.

Of that home, Grace and Rachel were the joint-heiresses, though it was
owned by the mother for her life. It was an estate of farm and moorland,
worth some three or four thousand a year, and the house was perched on
a beautiful promontory, running out into the sea, and inclosing one side
of a bay, where a small fishing-village had recently expanded into a
quiet watering-place, esteemed by some for its remoteness from railways,
and for the calm and simplicity that were yearly diminished by its
increasing popularity. It was the family fashion to look down from
their crag at the new esplanade with pity and contempt for the ruined
loneliness of the pebbly beach; and as Mrs. Curtis had not health to go
often into society, she had been the more careful where she trusted her
daughters. They belonged to the county by birth and tradition, and were
not to be mixed up with the fleeting residents of the watering-place, on
whom they never called, unless by special recommendation from a mutual
friend; and the few permanent inhabitants chanced to be such, that a
visit to them was in some degree a condescension. Perhaps there was more
of timidity and caution than of pride in the mother's exclusiveness, and
Grace had always acquiesced in it as the natural and established state
of affairs, without any sense of superiority, but rather of being
protected. She had a few alarms as to the results of Rachel's new
immunities of age, and though never questioning the wisdom of her clever
sister's conclusions, dreaded the effect on the mother, whom she
had been forbidden to call mamma. "At their age it was affecting an
interesting childishness."

Rachel had had the palm of cleverness conceded to her ever since she
could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister
at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and
excelled in, the studies that were a toil to Grace. Subsequently, while
Grace had contented herself with the ordinary course of unambitious
feminine life, Rachel had thrown herself into the process of
self-education with all her natural energy, and carried on her favourite
studies by every means within her reach, until she considerably
surpassed in acquirements and reflection all the persons with whom she
came in frequent contact. It was a homely neighbourhood, a society well
born, but of circumscribed interests and habits, and little connected
with the great progressi