, so unspotted,
so pure, so wrapped in high ideals; and then the page would reflect
something of the adoring awe in which Mrs. Simpson would have held
such a daughter. It will be seen that Mrs. Simpson knew how to express
herself, but there was a fine sincerity behind the mask of words; Miss
Filbert had entered very completely into possession.

It had its abnormal side, the way she entered into possession.
Everything about Laura Filbert had its abnormal side, none the less
obvious because it was inward, and invisible. Nature, of course, worked
with her, one might say that nature really did it all, since in the end
she was practically unconscious, except for the hope that certain souls
had been saved, that anything of the sort had happened. She conquered
the Simpsons and their friends chiefly by the simple impossibility that
they should conquer her, walking immobile among them even while she
admired Mr. Simpson's cauliflowers and approved the quality of Mrs.
Simpson's house linen. It must be confessed that nothing in her
surroundings spoke to her more loudly or more subtly than these things.
In view of what happened, poor dear Alicia Livingstone's anticipation
that the Simpsons and their circle would have a radical personal effect
upon Laura Filbert became ludicrous. They had no effect at all. She took
no tint, no curve. She appeared not to see that these precious things
were to be had for the assimilation. Her grace remained exclusively that
of holiness, and continued to fail to have any relation to the common
little things she did and said.

The Simpsons were more plastic. Laura had been with them hardly a week
before Mrs. Simpson, with touching humility, was trying to remodel
her spiritual nature upon the form so fortuitously, if the word is
admissible, presented. The dear lady had never before realised, by her
own statement, how terribly her religious feelings were mingled with
domestic and social considerations, how firmly her spiritual edifice
was based upon the things of this world. She felt that her soul
was honeycombed--that was her word--with conventionality and false
standards, and she made confessions like these to Laura, sitting in
the girl's bedroom in the twilight. They were very soothing, these
confessions. Laura would take Mrs. Simpson's thin, veined, middle-aged
hand in hers and seem to charge herself for the moment with the
responsibility of the elder lady's case. She did not attempt to conceal
her p