gland, of multitudes of girls, lovely,
accomplished, exquisitely dressed, humbly glad of the presence of any
sort of young man; but the Laphams had no skill or courage to make
themselves noticed, far less courted by the solitary invalid, or
clergyman, or artist. They lurked helplessly about in the hotel
parlours, looking on and not knowing how to put themselves forward.
Perhaps they did not care a great deal to do so. They had not a
conceit of themselves, but a sort of content in their own ways that one
may notice in certain families. The very strength of their mutual
affection was a barrier to worldly knowledge; they dressed for one
another; they equipped their house for their own satisfaction; they
lived richly to themselves, not because they were selfish, but because
they did not know how to do otherwise. The elder daughter did not care
for society, apparently. The younger, who was but three years younger,
was not yet quite old enough to be ambitious of it. With all her
wonderful beauty, she had an innocence almost vegetable. When her
beauty, which in its immaturity was crude and harsh, suddenly ripened,
she bloomed and glowed with the unconsciousness of a flower; she not
merely did not feel herself admired, but hardly knew herself
discovered. If she dressed well, perhaps too well, it was because she
had the instinct of dress; but till she met this young man who was so
nice to her at Baie St. Paul, she had scarcely lived a detached,
individual life, so wholly had she depended on her mother and her
sister for her opinions, almost her sensations. She took account of
everything he did and said, pondering it, and trying to make out
exactly what he meant, to the inflection of a syllable, the slightest
movement or gesture. In this way she began for the first time to form
ideas which she had not derived from her family, and they were none the
less her own because they were often mistaken.

Some of the things that he partly said, partly looked, she reported to
her mother, and they talked them over, as they did everything relating
to these new acquaintances, and wrought them into the novel point of
view which they were acquiring. When Mrs. Lapham returned home, she
submitted all the accumulated facts of the case, and all her own
conjectures, to her husband, and canvassed them anew.

At first he was disposed to regard the whole affair as of small
importance, and she had to insist a little beyond her own convictions