stories in prose and verse. Here and
there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and
never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here
and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving
heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed
among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognisable deed.

                                   Chapter I

 
 »Since I can do no good because a woman,
 Reach constantly at something that is near it.«
                                                             The Maid's Tragedy:
                                                          Beaumont and Fletcher.
 
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor
dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not
less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian
painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the
more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion
gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible, - or from one of
our elder poets, - in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper. She was usually spoken
of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had
more common-sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and it was
only to close observers that her dress differed from her sister's, and had a
shade of coquetry in its arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing was due
to mixed conditions, in most of which her sister shared. The pride of being
ladies had something to do with it: the Brooke connections, though not exactly
aristocratic, were unquestionably »good:« if you inquired backward for a
generation or two, you would not find any yard-measuring or parcel-tying
forefathers - anything lower than an admiral or a clergyman; and there was even
an ancestor discernible as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell, but
afterwards conformed, and managed to come out of all political troubles as the
proprietor of a respectable family estate. Young women of such birth, living in
a quiet country-house, and attending a village church hardly larger than a
parlour, naturally regarded frippery as the ambition of a huckster's daughter.
Then there was well-bred economy, which in those days made show in dress the
first item to be deducted from, when any margin was required for expenses more
distinctive of rank. Such reasons would have been enough to account for plain
dress, quite apart from religious feeling; but in Miss Brooke's case,
