“I try to correct myself by your example.”

“You might do worse.  By the bye—­if you won’t snap my nose off—­ I suppose your father isn’t very well to do?”

“He’s very poor.  Such men always are.”

Lady Ogram lay back and mused.  She had no affection for Constance, yet felt more kindly disposed to her than to any other girl or woman she knew.  Consciously or not, she had come to feel a likeness between her own mind and that of the clergyman’s daughter; she interpreted Constance’s thoughts by her own.  Indeed, there was a certain resemblance, both mental and moral.  In one regard it showed itself strikingly—­the contempt for their own sex which was natural to both.  As a mere consequence of her birth, Arabella Tomalin had despised and distrusted womanhood; the sentiment is all but universal in low-born girls.  Advancing in civilisation, she retained this instinct, and confirmed the habit of mind by results of her experience; having always sought for meanness and incapacity in the female world, she naturally had found a great deal of it.  By another way, Constance Bride had arrived at very much the same results; she made no friends among women, and desired none.  Lady Ogram and she agreed in their disdain for all “woman” movements; what progress they aimed at concerned the race at large, with merely a slighting glance towards the special circumstances of its sex-burdened moiety.  Moreover, the time-worn woman perceived in her young associate a personal ambition which she read by the light of her own past.  She divined in Constance a hunger for things at once substantial and brilliant, a smouldering revolt against poverty and dependence.  Not for the first time did she remark and study such a disposition; the symptoms were very well known to Lady Ogram; but never before had she met it in combination with genuine ability and other characteristics which she held in esteem.

“Let us talk about our coming man,” were her next words.

They talked of Dyce Lashmar.

CHAPTER IX

It was natural that Lady Ogram should from the beginning have suspected Miss Bride of a peculiar interest in Lashmar.  When first she introduced her friend’s name, Constance a little exaggerated the tone of impartiality, and in subsequent conversation she was never quite herself on this topic.  Evidently she thought of the young man more often than she cared to have it known; a sort of subdued irritation now and then betrayed itself in her when she assented to a favourable comment regarding him, and a certain suspense of judgment—­quite unlike her familiar attitude of mind—­always marked her agreement in hopes for his future.  The old woman of the world interpreted this by her own lights.  At moments it vexed her, for she did not like to be mystified; at others, it touched a chord of sympathy in some very obscure corner of her being.  And, as no practical problem could be put before her without her wishing to solve it autocratically, Lady Ogram soon formed a project with regard to these two persons, a project which took firmer consistence, and pleased her more, the more she pondered it.