h pleased her aunt in proportion to her own conventionality; she was
really a timid person, and she liked the show of courage which Margaret's
magnanimity often reflected upon her. She had through her a repute, with
people who did not know her well, for intellectual and moral qualities;
she was supposed to be literary and charitable; she almost had opinions
and ideals, but really fell short of their possession. She thought that
she set bounds to the girl's originality because she recognized them.
Margaret understood this better than her aunt, and knew that she had
consulted her about going to see the Dryfooses out of deference, and with
no expectation of luminous instruction. She was used to being a law to
herself, but she knew what she might and might not do, so that she was
rather a by-law. She was the kind of girl that might have fancies for
artists and poets, but might end by marrying a prosperous broker, and
leavening a vast lump of moneyed and fashionable life with her culture,
generosity, and good-will. The intellectual interests were first with
her, but she might be equal to sacrificing them; she had the best heart,
but she might know how to harden it; if she was eccentric, her social
orbit was defined; comets themselves traverse space on fixed lines. She
was like every one else, a congeries of contradictions and
inconsistencies, but obedient to the general expectation of what a girl
of her position must and must not finally be. Provisionally, she was very
much what she liked to be.

VII

Margaret Vance tried to give herself some reason for going to call upon
the Dryfooses, but she could find none better than the wish to do a kind
thing. This seemed queerer and less and less sufficient as she examined
it, and she even admitted a little curiosity as a harmless element in her
motive, without being very well satisfied with it. She tried to add a
slight sense of social duty, and then she decided to have no motive at
all, but simply to pay her visit as she would to any other eligible
strangers she saw fit to call upon. She perceived that she must be very
careful not to let them see that any other impulse had governed her; she
determined, if possible, to let them patronize her; to be very modest and
sincere and diffident, and, above all, not to play a part. This was easy,
compared with the choice of a manner that should convey to them the fact
that she was not playing a part. When the hesitating Irish serving-ma