Dressel had
ever formulated his aims, he might have said that he wanted to be the
man whom Hanaford most respected, and that was only another way of
saying, the richest man in Hanaford. Effie embraced his creed with a
zeal facilitated by such evidence of its soundness as a growing income
and the early prospects of a carriage. Her mother-in-law, a kind old
lady with a simple unquestioning love of money, had told her on her
wedding day that Harry's one object would always be to make his family
proud of him; and the recent purchase of the victoria in which Justine
and the Dressels were now seated was regarded by the family as a
striking fulfillment of this prophecy.

In the course of her hospital work Justine had of necessity run across
far different types; but from the connections thus offered she was often
held back by the subtler shades of taste that civilize human
intercourse. Her world, in short, had been chiefly peopled by the dull
or the crude, and, hemmed in between the two, she had created for
herself an inner kingdom where the fastidiousness she had to set aside
in her outward relations recovered its full sway. There must be actual
beings worthy of admission to this secret precinct, but hitherto they
had not come her way; and the sense that they were somewhere just out of
reach still gave an edge of youthful curiosity to each encounter with a
new group of people.

Certainly, Mrs. Gaines's garden-party seemed an unlikely field for the
exercise of such curiosity: Justine's few glimpses of Hanaford society
had revealed it as rather a dull thick body, with a surface stimulated
only by ill-advised references to the life of larger capitals; and the
concentrated essence of social Hanaford was of course to be found at the
Gaines entertainments. It presented itself, however, in the rich June
afternoon, on the long shadows of the well-kept lawn, and among the
paths of the rose-garden, in its most amiable aspect; and to Justine,
wearied by habitual contact with ugliness and suffering, there was pure
delight in the verdant setting of the picture, and in the light
harmonious tints of the figures peopling it. If the company was dull, it
was at least decorative; and poverty, misery and dirt were shut out by
the placid unconsciousness of the guests as securely as by the leafy
barriers of the garden.

X

"AH, Mrs. Dressel, we were on the lookout for you--waiting for the
curtain to rise. Your friend Miss Brent? Julia