t time, the voice of jealousy.

Where and how often did they meet? To ask this question was to touch
another motive of discontent. Ever since the return to London life,
Alma had felt dissatisfied with her social position. She was the wife
of a gentleman of independent means; in theory, all circles should be
open to her. Practically, she found herself very much restricted in the
choice of acquaintances. Harvey had hinted that she should be careful
where she went, and whom she knew; that she recognised the justice of
this warning served merely to irritate her against its necessity. Why,
then, did not her husband exert himself to obtain better society for
her? Plainly, he would never take a step in that direction; he had his
two or three friends, and found them sufficient; he would have liked to
see her very intimate with Mrs. Abbott--perhaps helping to teach babies
on the kindergarten system! Left to her own resources, she could do
little beyond refusing connections that were manifestly undesirable.
Sibyl, she knew, associated with people of much higher standing, only
out of curiosity taking a peep at the world to which her friend was
restricted. There had always been a slight disparity in this respect
between them, and in former days Alma had accepted it without
murmuring; but why did Sibyl, just when she could have been socially
helpful, show a disposition to hold aloof? 'Of course, you care nothing
for people of that kind,' Mrs. Carnaby had said, after casually
mentioning some 'good' family at whose country house she had been
visiting. It was intended, perhaps, as a compliment, with allusion to
Alma's theories of the 'simple life'; but, in face of the very plain
fact that such theories were utterly abandoned, it sounded to Alma a
humiliating irony.

Could it be that Sibyl feared inquiries, shrank from having it known
that she was on intimate terms with the daughter of the late Bennet
Frothingham--a name still too often mentioned in newspapers and
elsewhere? The shadow of this possibility had ere now flitted over
Alma's mind; she was in the mood to establish it as a certainty, and to
indulge the resentment that naturally ensued. For on more than one
occasion of late, at Mrs. Rayner Mann's or in some such house, she had
fancied that one person and another had eyed her in a way that was not
quite flattering, and that remarks were privately exchanged about her.
Perhaps Harvey himself saw in the fact of her parentage a soc