winter, partly to the accidents that are bound to happen when more than
two people are in the same room together. But there was no subject in
the world which she knew accurately. Her mind was in the state of an
intelligent man's in the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth;
she would believe practically anything she was told, invent reasons for
anything she said. The shape of the earth, the history of the world,
how trains worked, or money was invested, what laws were in force, which
people wanted what, and why they wanted it, the most elementary idea of
a system in modern life--none of this had been imparted to her by any of
her professors or mistresses. But this system of education had one great
advantage. It did not teach anything, but it put no obstacle in the way
of any real talent that the pupil might chance to have. Rachel, being
musical, was allowed to learn nothing but music; she became a fanatic
about music. All the energies that might have gone into languages,
science, or literature, that might have made her friends, or shown her
the world, poured straight into music. Finding her teachers inadequate,
she had practically taught herself. At the age of twenty-four she knew
as much about music as most people do when they are thirty; and could
play as well as nature allowed her to, which, as became daily more
obvious, was a really generous allowance. If this one definite gift
was surrounded by dreams and ideas of the most extravagant and foolish
description, no one was any the wiser.

Her education being thus ordinary, her circumstances were no more out of
the common. She was an only child and had never been bullied and laughed
at by brothers and sisters. Her mother having died when she was eleven,
two aunts, the sisters of her father, brought her up, and they lived
for the sake of the air in a comfortable house in Richmond. She was
of course brought up with excessive care, which as a child was for her
health; as a girl and a young woman was for what it seems almost crude