for seeing so much, and burned with blame of Dan for opening
her eyes to behold the inward wickedness beneath the conventional
propriety of the outward demeanour; but therein she was unjust to Dan.
He had opened her eyes sooner than they should have been opened, but
in any case she must have seen for herself eventually. Nothing in life
can be concealed from such a mind. What books could not teach her, she
discovered from people by sympathy, by insight, by intuition; but she
did not come into full possession of her faculties all at once. The
conditions of her life had tended rather to retard than to develop the
best that was in her, and the wonder was that her vision had not been
permanently distorted, so that she could see nothing but evil in all
things--see it, too, till her eyes were accustomed and her soul
corrupted, so that she not only ceased to resent it, but finally
accepted it as the inevitable order to which it is best to accommodate
oneself if one is to get any good out of life. This is the fate of
most young wives situated as Beth had been, the fate she had only
narrowly escaped by help of the strength that came of the brave
self-contained habits she had cultivated in her life of seclusion and
thought. It was the result of this training, and her constancy in
pursuing it, that her further faculty, hitherto so fitful, at last
shot up a bright and steady light which made manifest to her the
thoughts of others that they were not all evil, and helped her by the
grace in her own heart to perceive hidden processes of love at work in
other hearts, all tending to purification, and by the goodness of her
own soul to search out the goodness in other souls as the elements
find their constituent parts in the atmosphere.

Beth was looking her best that afternoon, although she had taken no
pains with herself. She seemed well dressed by dint of looking well in
her clothes; but she had not chosen to make herself look well. In the
exasperated phase of revolt through which she was passing, she could
not have been persuaded to dress so as to heighten the effect of her
appearance, and so make of herself a trap to catch admiring glances.
To be neat and fresh was all her care; but that was enough. The young
man with the pointed beard, who had been looking about the room
uneasily, seemed to have found what he wanted when he noticed her. He
asked an elderly man standing near him who the young lady of
distinguished appearance might be