the process of self-education with all her natural energy, and
carried on her favourite studies by every means within her reach,
until she considerably surpassed in acquirements and reflection all
the persons with whom she came in frequent contact. It was a homely
neighbourhood, a society well born, but of circumscribed interests
and habits, and little connected with the great progressive world,
where, however, Rachel's sympathies all lay, necessarily fed,
however, by periodical literature, instead of by conversation or
commerce with living minds.

She began by being stranded on the ignorance of those who surrounded
her, and found herself isolated as a sort of pedant; and as time went
on, the narrowness of interests chafed her, and in like manner left
her alone. As she grew past girlhood, the cui bono question had come
to interfere with her ardour in study for its own sake, and she felt
the influence of an age eminently practical and sifting, but with
small powers of acting. The quiet Lady Bountiful duties that had
sufficed her mother and sister were too small and easy to satisfy a
soul burning at the report of the great cry going up to heaven from a
world of sin and woe. The examples of successful workers stimulated
her longings to be up and doing, and yet the ever difficult question
between charitable works and filial deference necessarily detained
her, and perhaps all the more because it was not so much the fear of
her mother's authority as of her horror and despair, that withheld
her from the decisive and eccentric steps that she was always feeling
impelled to take. Gentle Mrs. Curtis had never been a visible power
in her house, and it was through their desire to avoid paining her
that her government had been exercised over her two daughters ever
since their father's death, which had taken place in Grace's
seventeenth year. Both she and Grace implicitly accepted Rachel's