elegance which only ancestral uselessness can give; that it was positive,
and to that degree vulgar.

A life like this was not one which would probably involve great passions
or affections, and it would be hard to describe exactly the feeling with
which he regarded his daughter. He liked her, of course, and he had
naturally expected certain things of her, as a ladylike intelligence,
behaviour, and appearance; but he had never shown any great tenderness
for her, or even pride in her. She had never given him any displeasure,
however, and he had not shared his wife's question of mind at a temporary
phase of Alice's development when she showed a decided inclination for a
religious life. He had apparently not observed that the girl had a
pensive temperament in spite of the effect of worldly splendour which her
mother contrived for her, and that this pensiveness occasionally deepened
to gloom. He had certainly never seen that in a way of her own she was
very romantic. Mrs. Pasmer had seen it, with amusement sometimes, and
sometimes with anxiety, but always with the courage to believe that she
could cope with it when it was necessary.

Whenever it was necessary she had all the moral courage she wanted; it
seemed as if she could have it or not as she liked; and in coming home
she had taken a flat instead of a house, though she had not talked with
her friends three minutes without perceiving that the moment when flats
had promised to assert their social equality with houses in Boston was
past for ever. There were, of course, cases in which there could be no
question of them; but for the most part they were plainly regarded as
makeshifts, the resorts of people of small means, or the defiances or
errors of people who had lived too much abroad. They stamped their
occupants as of transitory and fluctuant character; good people might
live in them, and did, as good people sometimes boarded; but they could