Her family, a large one, had fallen of late years from a position of moderate comfort into sheer struggle for subsistence.  Jessica, armed with certificates of examinational prowess, got work as a visiting governess.  At the same time, she nourished ambitions, discernible perhaps in the singular light of her deep-set eyes and a something of hysteric determination about her lips.  Her aim, at present, was to become a graduate of London University; she was toiling in her leisure hours—­the hours of exhaustion, that is to say—­to prepare herself for matriculation, which she hoped to achieve in the coming winter.  Of her intimate acquaintances only one could lay claim to intellectual superiority, and even she, Nancy Lord to wit, shrank from the ordeals of Burlington House.  To become B.A., to have her name in the newspapers, to be regarded as one of the clever, the uncommon women—­for this Jessica was willing to labour early and late, regardless of failing health, regardless even of ruined complexion and hair that grew thin beneath the comb.

She talked only of the ‘exam,’ of her chances in this or that ‘paper,’ of the likelihood that this or the other question would be ‘set.’  Her brain was becoming a mere receptacle for dates and definitions, vocabularies and rules syntactic, for thrice-boiled essence of history, ragged scraps of science, quotations at fifth hand, and all the heterogeneous rubbish of a ‘crammer’s’ shop.  When away from her books, she carried scraps of paper, with jottings to be committed to memory.  Beside her plate at meals lay formulae and tabulations.  She went to bed with a manual and got up with a compendium.

Nancy, whose pursuit of ‘culture’ followed a less exhausting track, regarded the girl with a little envy and some compassion.  Esteeming herself in every respect Jessica’s superior, she could not help a slight condescension in the tone she used to her; yet their friendship had much sincerity on both sides, and each was the other’s only confidante.  As soon as the mathematical difficulty could be set aside, Nancy began to speak of her private troubles.

‘The Prophet was here last night,’ she said, with a girlish grimace.  ’He’s beginning again.  I can see it coming.  I shall have to snub him awfully next time.’

‘Oh, what a worry he is!’

’Yes, but there’s something worse.  I suspected that the Pasha knew of it; now I feel sure he’s encouraging him.’

By this oriental style Nancy signified her father.  The Prophet was her father’s partner in business, Mr. Samuel Bennett Barmby.

’I feel sure now that they talked it over when the Prophet was taken into partnership.  I was thrown in as a “consideration."’

‘But how could your father possibly think—?’

’It’s hard to say what he does think about me.  I’m afraid I shall have to have a talk with him.  If so, it will be a long talk, and a very serious talk.  But he isn’t well just now, and I must put it off.’