trinal religion
had a strong hold upon her, and it was her solicitude that Beatrice
should walk from the first in the ways of Anglican salvation. She
dreaded the 'spirit of the age.' With a better judgment in pure
literature than falls to the lot of most women--or men either--she yet
banished from her abode, wherever it might be anything that remotely
savoured of intellectual emancipation; her aesthetic leanings she deemed
the great temptation of her life, for she frankly owned to her friends
that many things powerfully attracted her, which her con science bade
her shun as dangerous. Her generosity made her a shining light in the
world which busies itself in the dispensing or receiving of
ecclesiastical charity. The clerical element was very strong in the
circle that surrounded her. At the same time her worldly tastes did not
go altogether ungratified. She was very fond of music, and her unlimited
powers in the provision of first-rate musical entertainment brought to
her house acquaintances of a kind that would not otherwise have been
found there. The theatre she tabooed, regarding this severity as an
acceptable sacrifice, and not troubling to reflect what share her
ill-health had in rendering it a fairly easy one. In brief, she was a
woman of a genial nature, whose inconsistencies were largely due to her
inability to outgrow early conditions.

Beatrice inherited her mother's mental restrictions, but was endowed
with a subtlety of nature, which, aided by her circumstances, made her
yet more a being of inconsistencies and contradictions. Iii religion it
was not enough for her to conform; zeal drove her into the extremest
forms of ritualistic observance. Nor did care for her personal salvation
suffice; the logic of a compassionate nature led her on to various forms
of missionary activity; she haunted vile localities, ministering alike
to soul and body. At the same time she relished keenly the delights of
the masquerading sphere, where her wealth and her beauty made her doubly
welcome. From praying by the bedside of a costermonger's wife, she would
speed away to shine among the brightest in phantasmagoric drawing-rooms;
her mother could seldom accompany her, but there was always some one
ready to chaperon Beatrice Redwing. Once in the world from which thought
is banished, she seemed as thoughtless as any. Her spiritual convictions
put no veto even upon dancing. Yet her mood at such times was not the
entire self-abandonment