away appeared to her like a dream of the night
when it is gone.

Of course she had to listen to the moralities of this last vicissitude
from her various friends.

Said Miss Buff confidentially, "There is a vast deal more in
surroundings, Bessie, than people like to admit. We are all under their
influence. If we had seen you at Abbotsmead, we might have pitied your
sacrifice, but when we see you at the doctor's in your sprigged cambric
dresses, and your beautiful wavy hair in the style we remember, it seems
the most right and natural thing in the world that you should marry Mr.
Harry Musgrave--no condescension in it. But I did not _quite_ feel that
while you were at Fairfield, though I commended your resolution to have
your own way. Now that you are here you are just Bessie Fairfax--only
the doctor's little daughter. And that goes in proof of what I always
maintain--that grand people, where they are not known, ought never to
divest themselves of the outward and visible signs of their grandness;
for Nature has not been bountiful to them all with either wit or sense,
manners or beauty, though there are toadies everywhere able to discern
in them the virtues and graces suitable to their rank."

"Lady Latimer looks her part upon the stage," said Bessie.

"But how many don't! The countess of Harbro', for instance; who that did
not know her would take her for anything but a common person? Insolent
woman she is! She found fault with the choir to me last Sunday, as if I
were a singing-mistress and she paid my salary. Has old Phipps confessed
how you have astonished him and falsified his predictions?"

"I am not aware that I have done anything to astonish anybody. I fancied
that I had pleased Mr. Phipps rather than otherwise," said Bessie with a
quiet smile.

"And so you have. He is gratified that a young lady of quality should
have the pluck to make a marriage of affection in a rank so far below
her own, considering nothing but the personal worth of the man she
marries."

"I have never been able to discover the hard and fast conventional lines
that are supposed to separate ranks. There is an affectation in these
matters which practically deludes nobody. A liberal education and the
refinements of wealth are too extensively diffused for those whose pride
it is that they have done nothing but vegetate on one spot of land for
generations to hold themselves aloof as a superior caste. The
pretensions of some of them are evident