ous m'avoir humiliee pour m'avoir appris que la terre tourne
autour du soleil? Je vous jure que je ne m'en estime pas moins."
--FONTENELLE: _Pluralite des Mondes_.

That lofty criticism had caused Gwendolen a new sort of pain. She would
not have chosen to confess how unfortunate she thought herself in not
having had Miss Arrowpoint's musical advantages, so as to be able to
question Herr Klesmer's taste with the confidence of thorough
knowledge; still less, to admit even to herself that Miss Arrowpoint
each time they met raised an unwonted feeling of jealousy in her: not
in the least because she was an heiress, but because it was really
provoking that a girl whose appearance you could not characterize
except by saying that her figure was slight and of middle stature, her
features small, her eyes tolerable, and her complexion sallow, had
nevertheless a certain mental superiority which could not be explained
away--an exasperating thoroughness in her musical accomplishment, a
fastidious discrimination in her general tastes, which made it
impossible to force her admiration and kept you in awe of her standard.
This insignificant-looking young lady of four-and-twenty, whom any
one's eyes would have passed over negligently if she had not been Miss
Arrowpoint, might be suspected of a secret opinion that Miss Harleth's
acquirements were rather of a common order, and such an opinion was not
made agreeable to think of by being always veiled under a perfect
kindness of manner.

But Gwendolen did not like to dwell on facts which threw an unfavorable
light on itself. The musical Magus who had so suddenly widened her
horizon was not always on the scene; and his being constantly backward
and forward between London and Quetcham soon began to be thought of as
offering opportunities for converting him to a more admiring state of
mind. Meanwhile, in the manifest pleasure her singing gave at
Brackenshaw Castle, the Firs, and elsewhere, she recovered her
equanimity, being disposed to think approval more trustworthy than
objection, and not being one of the exceptional persons who have a
parching thirst for a perfection undemanded by their neighbors. Perhaps
it would have been rash to say then that she was at all exceptional
inwardly, or that the unusual in her was more than her rare grace of
movement and bearing, and a certain daring which gave piquancy to a
very common egoistic ambition, such as exists u