 attention to their principal household
treasures, the gas-lamps and the furnace-holes. »Whenever you feel homesick,« he
said, »you must come up here. We'll stick you down before a register, under a
good big burner, and --«
    »And you will soon get over your homesickness,« said Mrs. Tristram.
    Her husband stared; his wife often had a tone which he found inscrutable; he
could not tell for his life whether she was in jest or in earnest. The truth is
that circumstances had done much to cultivate in Mrs. Tristram a marked tendency
to irony. Her taste on many points differed from that of her husband; and though
she made frequent concessions, it must be confessed that her concessions were
not always graceful. They were founded upon a vague project she had of some day
doing something very positive, something a trifle passionate. What she meant to
do she could by no means have told you; but meanwhile, nevertheless, she was
buying a good conscience, by instalments.
    It should be added, without delay, to anticipate misconception, that her
little scheme of independence did not definitely involve the assistance of
another person, of the opposite sex; she was not saving up virtue to cover the
expenses of a flirtation. For this there were various reasons. To begin with,
she had a very plain face, and she was entirely without illusions as to her
appearance. She had taken its measure to a hair's breadth, she knew the worst
and the best, she had accepted herself. It had not been, indeed, without a
struggle. As a young girl, she had spent hours with her back to her mirror,
crying her eyes out; and later she had, from desperation and bravado, adopted
the habit of proclaiming herself the most ill-favoured of women, in order that
she might - as in common politeness was inevitable - be contradicted and
reassured. It was since she had come to live in Europe that she had begun to
take the matter philosophically. Her observation, acutely exercised here, had
suggested to her that a woman's first duty is not to be beautiful, but to be
pleasing; and she encountered so many women who pleased without beauty, that she
began to feel that she had discovered her mission. She had once heard an
enthusiastic musician, out of patience with a gifted bungler, declare that a
fine voice is really an obstacle to singing properly; and it occurred to her
that it might perhaps be equally true that a beautiful face is an obstacle to
the
