ways
been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled one of those little
mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were accustomed to affix to their upper
windows, so that from the depths of an impenetrable domesticity they
might see what was happening in the street.

Mrs. Peniston was the owner of a country-place in New Jersey, but she had
never lived there since her husband's death--a remote event, which
appeared to dwell in her memory chiefly as a dividing point in the
personal reminiscences that formed the staple of her conversation. She
was a woman who remembered dates with intensity, and could tell at a
moment's notice whether the drawing-room curtains had been renewed before
or after Mr. Peniston's last illness.

Mrs. Peniston thought the country lonely and trees damp, and cherished a
vague fear of meeting a bull. To guard against such contingencies she
frequented the more populous watering-places, where she installed herself
impersonally in a hired house and looked on at life through the matting
screen of her verandah. In the care of such a guardian, it soon became
clear to Lily that she was to enjoy only the material advantages of good
food and expensive clothing; and, though far from underrating these, she
would gladly have exchanged them for what Mrs. Bart had taught her to
regard as opportunities. She sighed to think what her mother's fierce
energies would have accomplished, had they been coupled with Mrs.
Peniston's resources. Lily had abundant energy of her own, but it was
restricted by the necessity of adapting herself to her aunt's habits. She
saw that at all costs she must keep Mrs. Peniston's favour till, as Mrs.
Bart would have phrased it, she could stand on her own legs. Lily had no
mind for the vagabond life of the poor relation, and to adapt herself to
Mrs. Peniston she had, to some degree, to assume that lady's passive
attitude. She had fancied at first that it would be easy to draw her aunt
into the whirl of her own activities, but there was a static force in
Mrs. Peniston against which her niece's efforts spent themselves in vain.
To attempt to bring her into active relation with life was like tugging
at a piece of furniture which has been screwed to the floor. She did not,
indeed, expect Lily to remain equally immovable: she had all the American
guardian's indulgence for the volatility of youth.

She had indulgence also for certain other habits of her niece's. It
seemed to her natural that Lily sho