Alma had occasionally complained to her friend, as she did the other evening to Harvey Rolfe, that easy circumstances were not favourable to artistic ambition, but no very serious disquiet had ever declared itself in her ordinary talk.  The phrases she now used, and the look that accompanied them, caused Sibyl some amusement.  Only two years older than Alma, Mrs. Carnaby enjoyed a more than proportionate superiority in knowledge of the world; her education had been more steadily directed to that end, and her natural aptitude for the study was more pronounced.  That she really liked Alma seemed as certain as that she felt neither affection nor esteem for any other person of her own sex.  Herself not much inclined to feminine friendship, Alma had from the first paid voluntary homage to Sibyl’s intellectual claims, and thought it a privilege to be admitted to her intimacy; being persuaded, moreover, that in Sibyl, and in Sibyl alone, she found genuine appreciation of her musical talent.  Sibyl’s choice of a husband had secretly surprised and disappointed her, for Hugh Carnaby was not the type of man in whom she felt an interest, and he seemed to her totally unworthy of his good fortune; but this perplexity passed and was forgotten.  She saw that Sibyl underwent no subjugation; nay, that the married woman did but perfect herself in those qualities of mind and mood whereby she had shone as a maiden.  It was a combination of powers and virtues which appeared to Alma little short of the ideal in womanhood.  The example influenced her developing character in ways she recognised, and in others of which she remained quite unconscious.

‘I think you couldn’t do better,’ Mrs. Carnaby replied to the last question; ‘provided that ——­’

She paused intentionally, with an air of soft solicitude, of bland wisdom.

‘That’s just what I wanted,’ said Alma eagerly.  ’Advise me —­ tell me just what you think.’

’You want to live alone, and to have done with all the silly conventionalities and proprieties —­ our old friend Mrs. Grundy, in fact.’

‘That’s it!  You understand me perfectly, as you always do.’

‘If it had been possible, we would have lived together.’

‘Ah! how delightful!  Don’t speak of what can’t be.’

‘I was going to say,’ pursued Sibyl thoughtfully, ’that you will meet with all sorts of little troubles and worries, which you have never had any experience of.  For one thing, you know’ —­ she leaned back, smiling, at ease —­ ’people won’t behave to you quite as you have been accustomed to expect.  Money is very important even to a man; but to a woman it means more than you can imagine.’

‘Oh, but I shan’t be living among the kind of people ——­’

’No, no.  Perhaps you don’t quite understand me yet.  It isn’t the people you seek who matter, but the people that will seek you; and some of them will have very strange ideas —­ very strange indeed.’