They were a strong contrast, these two, the ladies at the Lodge.  Miss Grey, the elder, was a little roly-poly woman, with a meek, round, fair-complexioned face, and pulpy soft-hands—­one of those people who irresistibly remind one of a white mouse.  She was neither clever nor wise, but she was very sweet-tempered.  She had loved Dr. Grey all her life.  From the time that she, a big girl, had dandled him, a baby, in her lap; throughout her brief youth, when she was engaged to young Mr. Gascoigne, who died; up to her somewhat silly and helpless middle-age, there never was anybody, to Miss Grey, like “my brother Arnold.”  Faithfulness is a rare virtue; let us criticise her no more, but pass her over, faults and all.

Miss Gascoigne was a lady who could not be passed over on any account.  Nothing would have so seriously offended her.  From her high nose to her high voice and her particularly high temper, every thing about her was decidedly prononcé.  There was no extinguishing her or putting her into a corner.  Rather than be unnoticed—­if such a thing she could ever believe possible—­she would make herself noticeable in any way, even in an ill way.  She was a good-looking woman, and a clever woman too, only not quite clever enough to find out one slight fact—­that there might be any body in the world superior to herself.

    "Set down your value at your own huge rate,
     The world will pay it"

—­for a time.  And so the world had paid it pretty well to Miss Gascoigne, but was beginning a little to weary of her; except fond Miss Grey, who still thought that, as there never was a man like “dear Arnold,” so there was not a woman any where to compare with “dear Henrietta.”

There is always something pathetic in this sort of alliance between two single women unconnected by blood.  It implies a substitution for better things—­marriage or kindred ties; and has in some cases a narrowing tendency.  No two people, not even married people, can live alone together for a number of years without sinking into a sort of double selfishness, ministering to one another’s fancies, humors, and even faults in a way that is not possible, or probable, in the wider or wholesomer life of a family.  And if, as is almost invariably the case—­ indeed otherwise such a tie between women could not long exist—­the stronger governs the weaker, one domineers and the other obeys, the result is bad for both.  It might be seen in the fidgety restlessness of Miss Gascoigne, whose eyes, still full of passionate fire, lent a painful youthfulness to her faded face, and in the lazy supineness of Miss Grey, who seemed never to have an opinion or a thought of her own.  This was the dark side of the picture; the bright side being that it is perfectly impossible for two women, especially single women, to live together, in friendship and harmony, for nearly twenty years, without a firm basis of moral worth existing in their characters, producing a fidelity of regard which is not only touching, but honorable to both.