s, done up), that life at present turned to her view from
week to week more and more the face of a striking and distinguished
stranger. She had reached a great age--for it quite seemed to her that
at twenty-five it was late to reconsider; and her most general sense
was a shade of regret that she had not known earlier. The world was
different--whether for worse or for better--from her rudimentary
readings, and it gave her the feeling of a wasted past. If she had only
known sooner she might have arranged herself more to meet it. She made,
at all events, discoveries every day, some of which were about herself
and others about other persons. Two of these--one under each head--more
particularly engaged, in alternation, her anxiety. She saw as she had
never seen before how material things spoke to her. She saw, and she
blushed to see, that if, in contrast with some of its old aspects, life
now affected her as a dress successfully "done up," this was exactly by
reason of the trimmings and lace, was a matter of ribbons and silk and
velvet. She had a dire accessibility to pleasure from such sources. She
liked the charming quarters her aunt had assigned her--liked them
literally more than she had in all her other days liked anything; and
nothing could have been more uneasy than her suspicion of her
relative's view of this truth. Her relative was prodigious--she had
never done her relative justice. These larger conditions all tasted of
her, from morning till night; but she was a person in respect to whom
the growth of acquaintance could only--strange as it might seem--keep
your heart in your mouth.

The girl's second great discovery was that, so far from having been for
Mrs. Lowder a subject of superficial consideration, the blighted home
in Lexham Gardens had haunted her nights and her days. Kate had spent,
all winter, hours of observation that were not less pointed for being
spent alone; recent events, which her mourning explained, assured her a
measure of isolation, and it was in the isolation above all that her
neighbour's influence worked. Sitting far downstairs Aunt Maud was yet
a presence from which a sensitive niece could feel herself extremely
under pressure. She knew herself now, the sensitive niece, as having
been marked from far back. She knew more than she could have told you,
by the upstairs fire, in a whole dark December afternoon. She knew so
much that her knowledge was what fairly kept her there, making her at
tim