tself as a personal desire; it wrought only as an
impassioned motive in the sphere of her intellectual aspirations, She
held herself more persistently apart from conventional intercourse; she
wished it had been possible to keep wholly to herself in the hours when
her services were not demanded. Mr. Athel, who liked to express himself
to young people with a sort of paternal geniality, rallied her one day
on her excessive study, and bade her be warned by a notorious example.
This had the effect of making her desist from reading in the presence of
other people.

She had known much happiness during these two months at The Firs,
happiness of a kind to dwell in the memory and be a resource in darker
days. Though mere personal ease was little the subject of her thoughts,
she prized for its effect upon her mind the air of graceful leisure, of
urbane repose, which pervaded the house. To compare The Firs with that
plain little dwelling on the skirts of a Yorkshire manufacturing town
which she called her home, was to understand the inestimable advantage
of those born into the material refinement which wealth can command, of
those who breathe from childhood the atmosphere of liberal enjoyment,
who walk from the first on clean ways, with minds disengaged from
anxiety of casual soilure, who know not even by domestic story the
trammels of sordid preoccupation. Thus it was with a sense of well-being
that she stepped on rich carpets, let her eyes wander over the light and
dark of rooms where wealth had done the bidding of taste, watched the
neat and silent ministering of servants. These things to her meant
priceless opportunity, the facilitating of self-culture. Even the little
room in which she sat by herself of evenings was daintily furnished;
when weary with reading, it eased and delighted her merely to gaze at
the soft colours of the wall-paper, the vases with their growing
flowers, the well-chosen pictures, the graceful shape of a chair; she
nursed her appreciation of these Joys, resisted the ingress of
familiarity, sought daily for novel aspects of things become intimately
known. She rose at early hours that she might have the garden to herself
in all its freshness; she loved to look from her window into the calm
depth of the summer midnight. In this way she brought into consciousness
the craving of her soul, made the pursuit of beauty a religion, grew to
welcome the perception of new meaning in beautiful things with a
spiritual d