ddenly:

"Do you often hear from your father?"

"Not often. Once in two months, perhaps."

"I suppose you are not what is called a good daughter?"

Constance found the remark rather embarrassing, for it hit a truth of
which she had been uneasily aware.

"Father and I have not much in common," she replied. "I respect him,
and I hope he isn't quite without some such feeling for me. But we go
such different ways."

"Does he believe what he pretends to?"

"He has never made any pretences at all, Lady Ogram. That's his
character, and I try to think that it's mine too."

"Well, well," exclaimed the old lady, "I suppose you're not going to
quarrel with me because I ask a simple question? You have a touchy
temper, you know. If I had had a temper like yours, I should have very
few friends at my age."

Constance averted her eyes, and said gravely:

"I try to correct myself by your example."

"You might do worse. By the bye--if you won't snap my nose off--I
suppose your father isn't very well to do?"

"He's very poor. Such men always are."

Lady Ogram lay back and mused. She had no affection for Constance, yet
felt more kindly disposed to her than to any other girl or woman she
knew. Consciously or not, she had come to feel a likeness between her
own mind and that of the clergyman's daughter; she interpreted
Constance's thoughts by her own. Indeed, there was a certain
resemblance, both mental and moral. In one regard it showed itself
strikingly--the contempt for their own sex which was natural to both.
As a mere consequence of her birth, Arabella Tomalin had despised and
distrusted womanhood; the sentiment is all but universal in low-born
girls. Advancing in civilisation, she retained this instinct, and
confirmed the habit of mind by results of her experience; having always
sought for meanness and incapacity in the female world, she naturally
had found a great deal of it. By another way, Constance Bride had
arrived at very much the same results; she made no friends among women,
and desired none. Lady Ogram and she agreed in their disdain for all
"woman" movements; what progress they aimed at concerned the race at
large, with merely a slighting glance towards the special circumstances
of its sex-burdened moiety. Moreover, the time-worn woman perceived in
her young associate a personal ambition which she read by the light of
her own past. She divined in Constance a hunger for things at once
substantial and brilliant