blankness of her doom. It was as if the earnest Miss Lindeck, tall and
mild, high and lean, with eye-glasses and a big nose, but "marked" in
a noticeable way, elegant and distinguished and refined, as you could
see from a mile off, and as graceful, for common despair of imitation,
as the curves of the "copy" set of old by one's writing-master--it was
as if this stately well-wisher, whom indeed she had never exchanged
a word with, but whom she had recognized and placed and winced at
as soon as he spoke of her, figured there beside him now as also in
portentous charge of her case.

He had ushered her into it in that way as if his mere right word
sufficed; and Julia could see them throne together, beautifully at one
in all the interests they now shared, and regard her as an object of
almost tender solicitude. It was positively as if they had become
engaged for her good--in such a happy light as it shed. That was the
way people you had known, known a bit intimately, looked at you as
soon as they took on the high matrimonial propriety that sponged over
the more or less wild past to which you belonged, and of which, all of
a sudden, they were aware only through some suggestion it made them
for reminding you definitely that you still had a place. On her
having had a day or two before to meet Mrs. Drack and to rise to her
expectation she had seen and felt herself act, had above all admired
herself, and had at any rate known what she said, even though losing,
at her altitude, any distinctness in the others. She could have
repeated later on the detail of her performance--if she hadn't
preferred to keep it with her as a mere locked-up, a mere unhandled
treasure. At present, however, as everything was for her at first
deadened and vague, true to the general effect of sounds and motions
in water, she couldn't have said afterward what words she spoke, what
face she showed, what impression she made--at least till she had