Knights of the Round Table of her fancy, armed by her enthusiasm for
impossible conflicts, of which they themselves, absorbed as they
are in the examination and pocket-money struggles of boyhood, have
no conception whatever. The effort to plant the tree of romance in
an ordinary middle-class household was predestined to failure. Her
disappointments are constant and crushing. Desires and capacities
which, with careful nurture, might have come to a fair fruit, are
chilled and nipped by the frost of neglect and ridicule. Her mind
becomes warped. The work that is ready to her hand, the ordinary round
of family tasks and serviceableness, repels her. She turns from it
with distaste, and thus widens still more the gulf between herself and
her relatives. Hence she is thrown back upon herself for companionship
and comfort. She dissects, for her own bitter enjoyment, her inmost
heart. She becomes the subtle analyst of her own imaginary motives.
She calls up accusing phantoms to charge her before the bar of her
conscience, in order that she may have the qualified satisfaction of
acquitting herself, whilst returning against her relatives a verdict
of guilty on every count of the indictment. In short, she becomes
a thoroughly morbid and hysterical young woman, suspicious, and
resentful even of the sympathy which is rarely offered to her. In the
meantime, two of her younger sisters are wooed and won in the orthodox
manner by steady-going gentlemen, of good position and prospects. The
congratulations showered upon them, and the rejoicings which attend
them on their wedding days, only serve to add melancholy to the
Undomestic Daughter, who has already begun to solace herself for her
failure to attract men by the reflection that matrimony itself is a
failure, and that there are higher and worthier things in life than
the wearing of orange-blossoms, and going-away dresses. It must be
said that her parents strive with but little vigour against their
daughter's inclination. Her father having hinted at indigestion as the