egan to revolve
about three or four main lines of thought, and to make a very fair
progress in the knowledge of herself. She knew her faults quite well;
and she was not unaware of her virtues. She knew perfectly that she
was apt to give way to internal irritation, of a strong though
invisible kind, when interruptions happened; that she now and then
gave way to an unduly fierce contempt of tiresome people, and said
little bitter things that she afterwards regretted. She also knew that
she was quite courageous, that she had magnificent physical health,
and that she could be perfectly content with a life that a good many
other people would find narrow and stifling.

Her own character then was one thing that she had studied--not in the
least in a morbid way--during her life at Stantons. And another thing
she was beginning to study, rather to her own surprise, was the
character of Laurie. She began to become a little astonished at the
frequency with which, during a silent drive, or some mild mechanical
labor in the gardens, the image of that young man would rise before
her.

Indeed, as has been said, she had new material to work on. She had not
realized till the _affaire_ Amy that boy's astonishing selfishness;
and it became for her a rather pleasant psychological exercise to
build up his characteristics into a consistent whole. It had not
struck her, till this specimen came before her notice, how generosity
and egotism, for example, so far from being mutually exclusive, can
very easily be complements, each of the other.

So then she passed her days--exteriorly a capable and occupied person,
interested in half a dozen simple things; interiorly rather
introspective, rather scrupulous, and intensely interested in the
watching of two characters--her own and her adopted brother's. Mrs.
Baxter's character needed no dissection; it was a consistent whole,
clear as crystal and as rigid.

It was still some five weeks before Christmas that Maggie became aware
of what, as a British maiden, she ought, of course, to have known long
before--namely, that she was thinking just a little too much about a
young man who, so far as was apparent, thought nothing at all about
her. It was true that once he had passed through a period of
sentimentality in her regard; but the extreme discouragement it had
met with had been enough.

Her discovery happened in this way.

Mrs. Baxter opened a letter one morning, smiling contentedly to
herself.