conference.



CHAPTER VII--SISTER AND SISTERS



"Have we not all, amid earth's petty strife,
Some pure ideal of a nobler life?
We lost it in the daily jar and fact,
And now live idly in a vain regret."
ADELAIDE PROCTER.


Agatha was so much absorbed in her preparation for St. Robert's that
she did not pay very much heed to her younger sisters or their
relations with Magdalen. She had induced them to submit to the
regulation of their studies with her pretty much as if she had been
Mrs. Best, looking upon her, however, as something out of date, and
hardly up to recent opinions, not realising that, of late, Magdalen's
world had been a wide one.

Perhaps, in Agatha's feelings, there was an undercurrent inherited
from her mother, who had always felt the better connected, better
educated step-daughter, a sort of alien element, exciting jealousy by
her companionship to her father, and after his death, apt to be
regarded as a scarcely willing, and perhaps censorious pay-master.

"Your sister might call it too expensive." "I must ask your sister."