
conscious force, felt the close threats of humiliation: for the first time the
conditions of this world seemed to her like a hurrying roaring crowd in which
she had got astray, no more cared for and protected than a myriad of other
girls, in spite of its being a peculiar hardship to her. If Klesmer were not at
Quetcham - that would be all of a piece with the rest: the unwelcome negative
urged itself as a probability, and set her brain working at desperate
alternatives which might deliver her from Sawyer's Cottage or the ultimate
necessity of »taking a situation,« a phrase that summed up for her the
disagreeables most wounding to her pride, most irksome to her tastes; at least
so far as her experience enabled her to imagine disagreeables.
    Still Klesmer might be there, and Gwendolen thought of the result in that
case with a hopefulness which even cast a satisfactory light over her peculiar
troubles, as what might well enter into the biography of celebrities and
remarkable persons. And if she had heard her immediate acquaintances
cross-examined as to whether they thought her remarkable, the first who said
»No« would have surprised her.
 

                                  Chapter XXII

 We please our fancy with ideal webs
 Of innovation, but our life meanwhile
 Is in the loom, where busy passion plies
 The shuttle to and fro, and gives our deeds
 The accustomed pattern.
 
Gwendolen's note, coming »pat betwixt too early and too late,« was put into
Klesmer's hands just when he was leaving Quetcham, and in order to meet her
appeal to his kindness he with some inconvenience to himself spent the night at
Wanchester. There were reasons why he would not remain at Quetcham.
    That magnificent mansion, fitted with regard to the greatest expense, had in
fact become too hot for him, its owners having, like some great politicians,
been astonished at an insurrection against the established order of things,
which we plain people after the event can perceive to have been prepared under
their very noses.
    There were as usual many guests in the house, and among them one in whom
Miss Arrowpoint foresaw a new pretender to her hand: a political man of good
family who confidently expected a peerage, and felt on public grounds that he
required a larger fortune to support the title properly. Heiresses vary, and
persons interested in one of them beforehand are prepared to find that she is
too yellow or too red, tall and toppling or short and square, violent and
capricious or moony and insipid; but in every case it is taken for granted that
she will consider herself an appendage to her fortune, and marry
