be useful--but, even if she had cared for the
diversions in favour at Lynbrook, a certain unavowed pride would have
kept her from participating in them on the same footing with Bessy's
guests. She was not in the least ashamed of her position in the
household, but she chose that every one else should be aware of it, that
she should not for an instant be taken for one of the nomadic damsels
who form the camp-followers of the great army of pleasure. Yet even on
this point her sensitiveness was not exaggerated. Adversity has a deft
hand at gathering loose strands of impulse into character, and Justine's
early contact with different phases of experience had given her a fairly
clear view of life in the round, what might be called a sound working
topography of its relative heights and depths. She was not seriously
afraid of being taken for anything but what she really was, and still
less did she fear to become, by force of propinquity and suggestion, the
kind of being for whom she might be temporarily taken.

When, at Bessy's summons, she had joined the latter at her camp in the
Adirondacks, the transition from a fatiguing "case" at Hanaford to a
life in which sylvan freedom was artfully blent with the most studied
personal luxury, had come as a delicious refreshment to body and brain.
She was weary, for the moment, of ugliness, pain and hard work, and life
seemed to recover its meaning under the aspect of a graceful leisure.
Lynbrook also, whither she had been persuaded to go with Bessy at the
end of their woodland cure, had at first amused and interested her. The
big house on its spreading terraces, with windows looking over bright
gardens to the hazy distances of the plains, seemed a haven of harmless
ease and gaiety. Justine was sensitive to the finer graces of luxurious
living, to the warm lights on old pictures and bronzes, the soft
mingling of tints in faded rugs and panellings of time-warmed oak. And
the existence to which this background formed a setting seemed at first
to have the same decorative qualities. It was pleasant, for once, to be
among people whose chief business was to look well and take life
lightly, and Justine's own buoyancy of nature won her immediate access
among the amiable persons who peopled Bessy's week-end parties. If they
had only abounded a little more in their own line she might have
succumbed to their spell. But it seemed to her that they missed the
poetry of their situation, transacting thei