get on more quickly
by herself. Meanwhile, with a view to the drama in case her operatic
scheme should fail, she took lessons in elocution and gymnastics.
Practice in these improved her health and spirits so much that her
previous aspirations seemed too limited. She tried her hand at all the
arts in succession, but was too discouraged by the weakness of her first
attempts to persevere. She knew that as a general rule there are feeble
and ridiculous beginnings to all excellence, but she never applied
general rules to her own case, still thinking of herself as an exception
to them, just as she had done when she romanced about Smilash. The
illusions of adolescence were thick upon her.

Meanwhile her progress was creating anxieties in which she had no share.
Her paroxysms of exhilaration, followed by a gnawing sense of failure
and uselessness, were known to her mother only as "wildness" and "low
spirits," to be combated by needlework as a sedative, or beef tea as a
stimulant. Mrs. Wylie had learnt by rote that the whole duty of a lady
is to be graceful, charitable, helpful, modest, and disinterested whilst
awaiting passively whatever lot these virtues may induce. But she
had learnt by experience that a lady's business in society is to get
married, and that virtues and accomplishments alike are important only
as attractions to eligible bachelors. As this truth is shameful, young
ladies are left for a year or two to find it out for themselves; it is
seldom explicitly conveyed to them at their entry into society. Hence
they often throw away capital bargains in their first season, and
are compelled to offer themselves at greatly reduced prices
subsequently, when their attractions begin to stale. This was the fate
which Mrs. Wylie, warned by Mrs. Jansenius, feared for Agatha, who, time
after time when a callow gentleman of wealth and position was introduced
to her, drove him brusquely away as soon as he ventured to hint that his
affections were concerned in their acquaintanceship. The anxious mother
had to console herself with the fact that her daughter drove away the
ineligible as ruthlessly as the eligible, formed no unworldly
attachments, was still very young, and would grow less coy as she
advanced in years and in what Mrs. Jansenius called sense.

But as the seasons went by it remained questionable whether Agatha was
the more to be congratulated on having begun life after leaving school
or Henrietta on having finished it.