Whereat she repentantly reminded herself that after all, if she despised the world and the flesh, there was no need to give herself airs; for certainly Harry Tatham was giving proof—­stronger proof indeed, of doing the same; if it were really his intention to offer his handsome person, and his no less handsome possessions to a girl as insignificant as herself.  Custom had not staled him.  And there was his mother too; who, instead of nipping the silly business in the bud, and carrying the foolish young man to London, was actually aiding and abetting—­sending gracious invitations to dinner, of the most unnecessary description.

What indeed could be more detached, more romantic—­apparently—­than the attitude of both Tatham and his mother toward their own immense advantages?

Yes.  But they were born to them; they had had time to get used to them.  “It would take me half a lifetime to find out what they mean, and another half to discover what to do with them.”

“And, if one takes the place, ought one not to earn the wages?  Lady Tatham sits loose to all her social duties, scorns frocks, won’t call, cuts bazaars, has never been known to take the chair at a meeting.  But I should call that shirking.  Either refuse the game; or play it!  And of all the games in the world, surely, surely the Lady Bountiful game is the dullest!  I won’t be bored with it!”

She went toward the house, her smiling eyes on the grass.  “But, of course, if I could not get on without the young man, I should put up with any conditions.  But I can get on without him perfectly!  I don’t want to marry him.  But I do—­I do want to be friends!”

“Lydia!  Mother says you’ll be late if you don’t get ready,” said a voice from the porch.

“Why, I am ready!  I have only to put on my hat.”

“Mother thought you’d change.”

“Then mother was quite wrong.  My best cotton frock is good enough for any young man!” laughed Lydia.

Susan descended the garden steps.  She was a much thinner and dimmer version of her sister.  One seemed to see her pale cheeks, her dark eyes and hair, her small mouth, through mist, like a Whistler portrait.  She moved very quietly, and her voice was low, and a little dragging.  The young vicar of a neighbouring hamlet in the fells, who admired her greatly, thought of her as playing “melancholy”—­in the contemplative Miltonic sense—­to Lydia’s “mirth.”  She was a mystery to him; a mystery he would have liked to unravel.  But she was also a mystery to her family.  She shut herself up a good deal with her books; she had written two tragedies in blank verse; and she held feminist views, vague yet fierce.  She was apparently indifferent to men, much more so than Lydia, who frankly preferred their society to that of her own sex; but Lydia noticed that if the vicar, Mr. Franklin, did not call for a week Susan would ingeniously invent some device or other for peremptorily inducing him to do so.