e, and it would never
occur to _them_ that they were eating one up. They did that without
tasting.

There was no such misfortune, or at any rate no such discomfort, she
further reasoned, as to be formed at once for being and for seeing. You
always saw, in this case, something else than what you were, and you
got, in consequence, none of the peace of your condition. However, as
she never really let Marian see what she was, Marian might well not
have been aware that she herself saw. Kate was accordingly, to her own
vision, not a hypocrite of virtue, for she gave herself up; but she was
a hypocrite of stupidity, for she kept to herself everything that was
not herself. What she most kept was the particular sentiment with which
she watched her sister instinctively neglect nothing that would make
for her submission to their aunt; a state of the spirit that perhaps
marked most sharply how poor you might become when you minded so much
the absence of wealth. It was through Kate that Aunt Maud should be
worked, and nothing mattered less than what might become of Kate in the
process. Kate was to burn her ships, in short, so that Marian should
profit; and Marian's desire to profit was quite oblivious of a dignity
that had, after all, its reasons--if it had only cared for them--for
keeping itself a little stiff. Kate, to be properly stiff for both of
them, would therefore have had to be selfish, have had to prefer an
ideal of behaviour--than which nothing, ever, was more selfish--to the
possibility of stray crumbs for the four small creatures. The tale of
Mrs. Lowder's disgust at her elder niece's marriage to Mr. Condrip had
lost little of its point; the incredibly fatuous behaviour of Mr.
Condrip, the parson of a dull suburban parish, with a saintly profile
which was always in evidence, being so distinctly on record to keep
criticism consistent. He had presented his profile on system, having,
goodness knew, nothing else to present--nothing at all to full-face the
world with, no imagination of the propriety of living and minding his
business. Criticism had remained on Aunt Maud's part consistent enough;
she was not a person to regard such proceedings as less of a mistake
for having acquired more of the privilege of pathos. She had not been
forgiving, and the only approach she made to overlooking them was by
overlooking--with the surviving delinquent--the solid little phalanx
that now represented them. Of the two sinister ceremonies