ndreds of acquaintances, who
would eat her dinners and go away and poke fun at her, but not a single
friend. Her husband lived on her and hardly spoke to her. Her boy at
Eton, an amazing prig, looked down on her. Her little daughter never
dreamed of obeying her. Anna herself was prevented by some stubborn
spirit of fastidiousness, evidently not possessed by any of her
contemporaries, from doing the only thing Susie had ever really wanted
her to do--marrying, and getting herself out of the way. What if Susie
were a vulgar little woman of no education and no family? That did not
make it any the more glorious for the Estcourts to take all they could
and ignore her existence. It was, after all, Susie who paid the bills.
Anna pitied her from the bottom of her heart; such a forlorn little
woman, taken out of her proper sphere, and left to shiver all alone,
without a shred of love to cover and comfort her.

It was when she was away from Susie that she felt this. When she was
with her, she found herself as cold and quiet and contradictory as
Peter. She used, whenever she got the chance, to go to afternoon service
at St. Paul's. It was the only place and time in which all the bad part
of her was soothed into quiet, and the good allowed to prevail in peace.
The privacy of the great place, where she never met anyone she knew, the
beauty of the music, the stateliness of the service offered every day in
equal perfection to any poor wretch choosing to turn his back for an
hour on the perplexities of life, all helped to hush her grievances to
sleep and fill her heart with tenderness for those who were not happy,
and for those who did not know they were unhappy, and for those who
wasted their one precious life in being wretched when they might have
been happy. How little it would need, she thought (for she was young and
imaginative), to turn most people's worries and sadness into joy. Such a
little difference in Susie's ways and ideas would make them all so
happy; such a little change in Peter's habits would make his wife's life
radiant. But they all lived blindly on, each day a day of emptiness,
each of those precious days, so crowded with opportunities, and
possibilities, and unheeded blessings, and presently life would be
behind them, and their chances gone for ever.

"The world is a dreadful place, full of unhappy people," she thought,
looking out on to the world with unhappy eyes. "Each one by himself,
with no one to comfort him.