Proudie will
come and put me up to a wrinkle or two." The bishop again rubbed his
hands, and said that he was sure she would. He never felt quite at
his ease with Miss Dunstable, as he rarely could ascertain whether
or no she was earnest in what she was saying. So he trotted off,
muttering some excuse as he went, and Miss Dunstable chuckled with an
inward chuckle at his too evident bewilderment. Miss Dunstable was by
nature kind, generous, and open-hearted; but she was living now very
much with people on whom kindness, generosity, and open-heartedness
were thrown away. She was clever also, and could be sarcastic; and
she found that those qualities told better in the world around her
than generosity and an open heart. And so she went on from month to
month, and year to year, not progressing in a good spirit as she
might have done, but still carrying within her bosom a warm affection
for those she could really love. And she knew that she was hardly
living as she should live,--that the wealth which she affected to
despise was eating into the soundness of her character, not by its
splendour, but by the style of life which it had seemed to produce
as a necessity. She knew that she was gradually becoming irreverent,
scornful, and prone to ridicule; but yet, knowing this, and hating
it, she hardly knew how to break from it. She had seen so much of
the blacker side of human nature that blackness no longer startled
her as it should do. She had been the prize at which so many ruined
spendthrifts had aimed; so many pirates had endeavoured to run her
down while sailing in the open waters of life, that she had ceased to
regard such attempts on her money-bags as unmanly or over-covetous.
She was content to fight her own battle with her own weapons, feeling
secure in her own strength of purpose and strength of wit.

Some few friends she had whom she really loved,--among whom her inner
self could come out and speak boldly what it had to say with its own
true voice. And the woman who thus so spoke was very different from
that Miss Dunstable whom Mrs. Proudie courted, and the Duke of Omnium
feted, and Mrs. Harold Smith claimed as her bosom friend. If only she
could find among such one special companion on whom her heart might
rest, who would help her to bear the heavy burdens of her world!
But where was she to find such a friend?--she with her keen wit,
her untold money, and loud laughing voice. Everything about her was
calculated to at