gain, following with patient feet wherever the
unconscious royalties led, meeting the same people, listening to the
same music, talking the same talk, eating the same dinners--would no one
ever invent anything new to eat? The inexpressible boredom of riding up
and down the Row every morning, the unutterable hours shopping and
trying on clothes, the weariness of all the new pictures, and all the
concerts, and all the operas, which seemed to grow less pleasing every
year, as her eye and ear grew more critical. She knew at last every note
of the stock operas and concerts, and every note seemed to have got on
to her nerves.

And then the people they knew--the everlasting sameness of them, content
to go the same dull round for ever. Driving in the Park with Susie,
neither of them speaking a word, she used to watch the faces in the
other carriages, nearly all faces of acquaintances, to see whether any
of them looked cheerful; and it was the rarest thing to come across any
expression but one of blankest boredom. Bored and cross, hardly ever
speaking to the person with them, their friends drove up and down every
afternoon, and she and Susie did the same, as silent and as bored as any
of them. A few unusually beautiful, or unusually witty, or unusually
young persons appeared to find life pleasant and looked happy, but they
avoided Susie. Her set was made up of the dull and plain; and all the
amusing people, and all the interesting people, turned their backs with
one accord on her and it.

These were the circumstances that drove Anna to reflect on the problems
of life every time she was beyond the sound of Susie's voice.

She passionately resented her position of dependence on Susie, and she
passionately resented the fact that the only way to get out of it was to
marry. Every time she had an offer, she first of all refused it with an
energy that astonished the unhappy suitor, and then spent days and
nights of agony because she had refused it, and because Susie wanted her
to accept it, and because of an immense pity for Susie that had taken
possession of her heart. How could Peter live so placidly at Susie's
expense, and treat her with such a complete want of tenderness? Anna's
love for her brother diminished considerably directly she began to
understand Susie's life. It was such a pitiful little life of cringing,
and pushing, and heroically smiling in the face of ill-treatment. No one
cared for her in the very least. She had hu