d had
more than once been chosen by a director to be that member of a crowd
who moves in the front and expresses the crowd psychologically. Had
she only had the clothes....

And now she was to have them. As far as that went she was not merely
glad; she was one sheer quiver of excitement. It was not the end she
shrank from; it was the means. If she could only have had fifty
dollars to go "poking round" where she knew that bargains could be
found, she might have enjoyed the prospect; but Steptoe could only
"take measures" on the grand scale to which he was accustomed.

The grand scale frightened her, chiefly because she was dressed as she
was dressed. It was her first thought and her last one. When Steptoe
told her the hour at which he had asked Eugene to bring round the car
the mere vision of herself stepping into it made her want to sink into
the ground. Eugene didn't live in the house--she had discovered
that--and so would bring the stare of another pair of eyes under whose
scrutiny she would have to pass. Those of the three women having
already scorched her to the bone, she would have to be scorched
again.

She tried to say this to Steptoe, as they stood in the drawing-room
window waiting for the car; but she didn't know how to make him
understand it. When she tried to put it into words, the right words
wouldn't come. Steptoe had taken as general what she was trying to
explain to him in particular.

"It'll be very important to madam to fyce what's 'ard, and to do it
bryve like. It'll be the mykin' of 'er if she can. 'Umble 'ill is
pretty stiff to climb; but them as gets to the top of it is tough."

She thought this over silently. He meant that if she set herself to
take humiliations as they came, dragging herself up over them, she
would be the stronger for it in the end.

"It'd 'ave been better for Mr. Rashleigh," he mused, "if 'e'd 'ad 'ad
somethink of the kind to tackle in 'is life; it'd 'ave myde 'im more
of a man. But because 'e adn't--Did madam ever notice," he broke off
to ask, "'ow them as 'as everythink myde easy for 'em begins right off
to myke things 'ard for theirselves. It's a kind of law like. It's
just as if nyture didn't mean to let no one escype. When a man's got
no troubles you can think of, 'e'll go to work to create 'em."

"Didn't _he_"--she had never yet pronounced the name of the man who
had married her--"didn't _he_ ever have any troubles?"

"'E was fretted terrible--crossed like--rubbe