Mrs. Orton Beg was a sister of Mrs. Frayling's and an oracle to Evadne.
Mrs. Frayling was fair, plump, sweet, yielding, commonplace, prolific;
Mrs. Orton Beg was a barren widow, slender, sincere, silent, firm, and
tender. Mrs. Frayling, for lack of insight, was unsympathetic, Mrs. Orton
Beg was just the opposite; and she and Evadne understood each other, and
were silent together in the most companionable way in the world.

When Evadne went to her own room on the evening made memorable by the
twins' famous anthem, she was haunted by that word "ineffectual," which
Mrs. Orton Beg had used. "Ineffectual genius"--there was something
familiar as well as high sounding in the epithet; it recalled an idea with
which she was already acquainted; what was it? She opened her "Commonplace
Book," and sat with her pen in her hand, cogitating comfortably. She had
no need to weary her fresh young brain with an irritating pursuit of what
she wanted; she had only to wait, and it would recur to her. And presently
it came. Her countenance brightened. She bent over the book and wrote a
few lines, read them when she had blotted them, and was satisfied.

"I have it," she wrote. "Shelley = genius of the nineteenth
century--'Beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his
luminous wings in vain.'--_Matthew Arnold_."

When she had done this she took up a book, went to the fire, settled
herself in an easy-chair, and began to read. The book was "Ruth," by Mrs.
Gaskell, and she was just finishing it. When she had done so she went back
to the table, and copied out the following paragraph:

"The daily life into which people are born, and into which they are
absorbed before they are aware, forms chains which only one in a hundred
has moral strength enough to despise, and to break when the right time