ble her to give herself up to
him altogether, and submit herself to him as her lord and master,--he
must be something different from Jonathan Stubbs. That had been the
theory of her life for many months past, a theory on which she had
resolved to rely with all her might from the moment in which this
man had spoken to her of his love. Would she give way and render
up herself and all her dreams simply because the man was one to be
liked? She had declared to herself again and again that it should not
be so. There should come the Angel of Light or there should come no
lover for her. On that very morning as she was packing up her boxes
at Kingsbury Crescent she had arranged the words in which, should
he speak to her on the subject in the railway train, she would make
him understand that it could never be. Surely he would understand
if she told him so simply, with a little prayer that his suit might
not be repeated. His suit had not been repeated. Nothing apparently
had been further from his intention. He had been droll, pleasant,
friendly,--just like his old dear self. For in truth the pleasantness
and the novelty of his friendship had made him dear to her. He had
gone back of his own accord to the old ways, without any little
prayer from her. Now was she contented? As the question would thrust
itself upon her in opposition to her own will, driving out the
thoughts which she would fain have welcomed, she gazed listlessly at
the fire. If it were so, then for what purpose, then for what reason,
had Lady Albury procured for her the pale grey pearl-coloured dress?

And why were all these grand people at Stalham so good to her,--to
her, a poor little girl, whose ordinary life was devoted to the
mending of linen and to the furtherance of economy in the use of
pounds of butter and legs of mutton? Why was she taken out of her own
sphere and petted in this new luxurious world? She had a knowledge
belonging to her,--if not quite what we may call common sense,--which
told her that there must be some cause. Of some intellectual
capacity, some appreciation of things and words which were divine in
their beauty, she was half conscious. It could not be, she felt, that
without some such capacity she should have imaged to herself that
Angel of Light. But not for such capacity as that had she been made
welcome at Stalham. As for her prettiness, her beauty of face and
form, she thought about them not at all,--almost not at all. In
appearing in