o, by-the-bye, somewhat misrepresented his wife
in the account he gave to Mallard of their Sunday experiences.
Puritanism was familiar to her by more than speculation; in the
compassion with which she regarded Miriam there was no mixture of
contempt, as in her husband's case. On the other hand, she did not
pretend to read completely her con sin's heart and mind; she knew that
there was no simple key to Miriam's character, and the quiet study of
its phases from day to day deeply interested her.

Cecily Doran had been known to Spence from childhood; her father was
his intimate friend. But Eleanor had only made the girl's acquaintance
in London, just after her marriage, when Cecily was spending a season
there with her aunt, Mrs. Lessingham. Mallard's ward was then little
more than fifteen; after several years of weak health, she had entered
upon a vigorous maidenhood, and gave such promise of free, joyous,
aspiring life as could not but strongly affect the sympathies of a
woman like Eleanor. Three years prior to that, at the time of her
father's death, Cecily was living with Mrs. Elgar, a widow, and her
daughter Miriam, the latter on the point of marrying (at eighteen) one
Mr. Baske, a pietistic mill-owner, aged fifty. It then seemed very
doubtful whether Cecily would live to mature years; she had been
motherless from infancy, and the difficulty with those who brought her
up was to repress an activity of mind which seemed to be one cause of
her bodily feebleness. In those days there was a strong affection
between her and Miriam Elgar, and it showed no sign of diminution in
either when, on Mrs. Elgar's death, a year and a half after Miriam's
marriage, Cecily passed into the care of her father's sister, a lady of
moderate fortune, of parts and attainments, and with a great love of
cosmopolitan life. A few months more and Mrs. Baske was to be a widow,
childless, left in possession of some eight hundred a year, her house
at Bartles, and a local importance to which she was not indifferent.
With the exception of her brother, away in London, she had no near kin.
It would now have been a great solace to her if Cecily Doran could have
been her companion; but the young girl was in Paris, or Berlin, or St.
Petersburg, and, as Miriam was soon to learn, the material distance
between them meant little in comparison with the spiritual remoteness
which resulted from Cecily's education under Mrs. Lessingham. They
corresponded, however, and