oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance
they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but
after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and
formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent
social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge
for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague
ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was
disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.

Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient
indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures
of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as
the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might
be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness
remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one
would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite
love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared
uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the
living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and
there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving
heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are
dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some
long-recognizable deed.

BOOK I.

MISS BROOKE.

CHAPTER I.

"Since I can do no good because a woman,
Reach constantly at something that is near it.
--The Maid's Tragedy: BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into
relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that
she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the
Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as
her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain
garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the
impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,--or from one of our
elder poets,--in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper. She was usually
spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her
sister Celia had more common-sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely
more trimmings; and it was only to close observers that her dress
differed from her sister's, and had a shade of coq