the article which she pretended to seek, but by a wicked wish to
stare at her. The vulgar creature was determined to see for
herself what sort of a figure a mildewed piece of aristocracy,
after wasting all the bloom and much of the decline of her life
apart from the world, would cut behind a counter. In this
particular case, however mechanical and innocuous it might be at
other times, Hepzibah's contortion of brow served her in good stead.

"I never was so frightened in my life!" said the curious customer,
in describing the incident to one of her acquaintances. "She's a
real old vixen, take my word of it! She says little, to be sure;
but if you could only see the mischief in her eye!"

On the whole, therefore, her new experience led our decayed
gentlewoman to very disagreeable conclusions as to the temper
and manners of what she termed the lower classes, whom heretofore
she had looked down upon with a gentle and pitying complaisance,
as herself occupying a sphere of unquestionable superiority.
But, unfortunately, she had likewise to struggle against a bitter
emotion of a directly opposite kind: a sentiment of virulence,
we mean, towards the idle aristocracy to which it had so recently
been her pride to belong. When a lady, in a delicate and costly
summer garb, with a floating veil and gracefully swaying gown,
and, altogether, an ethereal lightness that made you look at her
beautifully slippered feet, to see whether she trod on the dust
or floated in the air,--when such a vision happened to pass through
this retired street, leaving it tenderly and delusively fragrant
with her passage, as if a bouquet of tea-roses had been borne along,
--then again, it is to be feared, old Hepzibah's scowl could no
longer vindicate itself entirely on the plea of near-sightedness.