strangely enough--so mixed were her superstitions and her heresies--a
large part of her motive lay in the value she attached to such a
consecration.

Of her mother intrinsically she thought very little now, and if her
eyes were fixed on a special achievement it was much more for the
sake of that achievement and to satisfy a latent energy that was in
her than because her heart was wrung by this sufferer. Her heart had
not been wrung at all, though she had quite held it out for the
experience. Her purpose was a pious game, but it was still
essentially a game. Among the ideas I have mentioned she had her
idea of triumph. She had caught the inevitable note, the pitch, on
her very first visit to Chester Square. She had arrived there in
intense excitement, and her excitement was left on her hands in a
manner that reminded her of a difficult air she had once heard sung
at the opera when no one applauded the performer. That flatness had
made her sick, and so did this, in another way. A part of her
agitation proceeded from the fact that her aunt Julia had told her,
in the manner of a burst of confidence, something she was not to
repeat, that she was in appearance the very image of the lady in
Chester Square. The motive that prompted this declaration was
between aunt Julia and her conscience; but it was a great emotion to
the girl to find her entertainer so beautiful. She was tall and
exquisitely slim; she had hair more exactly to Rose Tramore's taste
than any other she had ever seen, even to every detail in the way it
was dressed, and a complexion and a figure of the kind that are
always spoken of as "lovely." Her eyes were irresistible, and so
were her clothes, though the clothes were perhaps a little more
precisely the right thing than the eyes. Her appearance was marked
to her daughter's sense by the highest distinction; though it may be