Acquaintances had been made to understand that Mrs. Eliott had had
nothing to do with it. They went away baffled, but confirmed in their
impression that she knew; which was, after all, what they wanted to know.

It was not so easy to satisfy the licensed curiosity of Anne's friends.
They came to-day in quantities, attracted by the news of the Majendies'
premature return from their honeymoon. Mrs. Eliott felt that Miss Proctor
and the Gardners were sitting on in the hope of meeting them.

Mrs. Eliott had been obliged to accept Anne's husband, that she might
retain Anne's affection. In this she did violence to her feelings, which
were sore on the subject of the marriage. It was not only on account of
the inglorious clouds he trailed. In any case she would have felt it as a
slight that her friend should have married without her assistance, and so
far outside the charmed circle of Thurston Square. She herself was for
the moment disappointed with Anne. Anne had once taken them all so
seriously. It was her solemn joy in Mrs. Eliott and her circle that had
enabled her young superiority to put up so long with the provincial
hospitalities of Scale on Humber. They, the slender aristocracy of
Thurston Square, were the best that Scale had to offer her, and they had
given her of their best. Socially, the step from Thurston Square to Prior
Street could not be defined as a going down; but, intellectually, it was
a decline, and morally (to those who knew Fanny Eliott and to Fanny
Eliott who _knew_) it was, by comparison, a plunge into the abyss. Fanny
Eliott was the fine flower of Thurston Square. She had satisfied even the
fastidiousness of Anne.

She owned that Mr. Majendie had satisfied it too. It was not that quality
in Anne that made her choice so--well, so incomprehensible.