wake for hours by the wall-paper in her
room; yet none the less, as in her fresh widow's weeds she rustled
across the hall, she was sustained by the consciousness, which always
added to the unction of her social Sundays, that she was, as usual, the
only person in the house incapable of wearing in her preparation the
horrible stamp of the same exceptional smartness that would be
conspicuous in a grocer's wife. She would rather have perished than have
looked _endimanchee_.

She was fortunately not challenged, the hall being empty of the other
women, who were engaged precisely in arraying themselves to that dire
end. Once in the grounds, she recognized that, with a site, a view that
struck the note, set an example to its inmates, Waterbath ought to have
been charming. How she herself, with such elements to handle, would have
taken the fine hint of nature! Suddenly, at the turn of a walk, she came
on a member of the party, a young lady seated on a bench in deep and
lonely meditation. She had observed the girl at dinner and afterwards:
she was always looking at girls with an apprehensive or speculative
reference to her son. Deep in her heart was a conviction that Owen
would, in spite of all her spells, marry at last a frump; and this from
no evidence that she could have represented as adequate, but simply from
her deep uneasiness, her belief that such a special sensibility as her
own could have been inflicted on a woman only as a source of anguish. It
would be her fate, her discipline, her cross, to have a frump brought
hideously home to her. This girl, one of the two Vetches, had no beauty,
but Mrs. Gereth, scanning the dullness for a sign of life, had been
straightway able to classify such a figure as the least, for the moment,
of her afflictions. Fleda Vetch was dressed with an idea, though perhaps
with not much else; and that made a bond when there was none other,
especially as in this case the idea was real, not imitation. Mrs. Gereth
had long ago generalized the truth that the temperament of the frump is
amply consistent with a certain usual prettiness. There were five girls
in the party, and the prettiness of this one, slim, pale, and
black-haired, was less likely than that of the others ever to occasion
an exchange of platitudes. The two less developed Brigstocks, daughters
of the house, were in particular tiresomely "lovely." A second glance,
this morning, at the young lady before her conveyed to Mrs. Gereth the
soo