, keeping up the convenient habit of
familiar intercourse, she had begun to be aware that their view of her
had in it an element of criticism and compassion. She had once fancied
that Amherst's good looks, and the other qualities she had seen in him,
would immediately make him free of the charmed circle in which she
moved; but she was discouraged by his disregard of his opportunities,
and above all by the fundamental differences in his view of life. He was
never common or ridiculous, but she saw that he would never acquire the
small social facilities. He was fond of exercise, but it bored him to
talk of it. The men's smoking-room anecdotes did not amuse him, he was
unmoved by the fluctuations of the stock-market, he could not tell one
card from another, and his perfunctory attempts at billiards had once
caused Mr. Langhope to murmur, in his daughter's hearing: "Ah, that's
the test--I always said so!"

Thus debarred from what seemed to Bessy the chief points of contact with
life, how could Amherst hope to impose himself on minds versed in these
larger relations? As the sense of his social insufficiency grew on her,
Bessy became more sensitive to that latent criticism of her marriage
which--intolerable thought!--involved a judgment on herself. She was
increasingly eager for the approval and applause of her little audience,
yet increasingly distrustful of their sincerity, and more miserably
persuaded that she and her husband were the butt of some of their most
effective stories. She knew also that rumours of the disagreement about
Westmore were abroad, and the suspicion that Amherst's conduct was the
subject of unfriendly comment provoked in her a reaction of loyalty to
his ideas....

From this turmoil of conflicting influences only her friendship with
Justine Brent remained secure. Though Justine's adaptability made it
easy for her to fit into the Lynbrook life, Bessy knew that she stood as
much outside of it as Amherst. She could never, for instance, be
influenced by what Maria Ansell and the Gaineses and the Telfers
thought. She had her own criteria of conduct, unintelligible to Bessy,
but giving her an independence of mind on which her friend leaned in a
kind of blind security. And that even her faith in Justine should
suddenly be poisoned by a jealous thought seemed to prove that the
consequences of her marriage were gradually infecting her whole life.
Bessy could conceive of masculine devotion only as subservient to