She had not inherited all her husband’s possessions; indeed, there fell to her something less than half his personal estate.  For a time, this had not concerned her; now she was beginning to think of it occasionally with discontent, followed by reproach of conscience.  Like reproach did she suffer for the jealousy and envy excited in her by Mrs. Welland’s arrival.  A general uneasiness of mind was gradually induced, and the chapel-building project, with singular confusion of motives, represented to her at once a worldly ambition and a discipline for the soul.  It was a long time before she spoke of it, and in the interval she suffered more and more from a vague mental unrest.

Letters were coming to her from Cecily.  Less by what they contained than by what they omitted, she knew that Cecily was undergoing a great change.  Miriam put at length certain definite questions, and the answers she received were unsatisfactory, alarming.  The correspondence became a distinct source of trouble.  Not merely on Cecily’s account; she was led by it to think of the world beyond her horizon, and to conceive dissatisfactions such as had never taken form to her.

Her physical health began to fall off; she had seasons of depression, during which there settled upon her superstitious fears.  Ascetic impulses returned, and by yielding to them she established a new cause of bodily weakness.  And the more she suffered, the more intolerable to her grew the thought of resigning her local importance.  Her pride, whenever irritated, showed itself in ways which exposed her to the ridicule of envious acquaintances.  At length Bartles was surprised with an announcement of what had so long been in her mind; a newspaper paragraph made known, as if with authority, the great and noble work Mrs. Baske was about to undertake.  For a day or two Miriam enjoyed the excitement this produced—­the inquiries, the felicitations, the reports of gossip.  She held her head more firmly than ever; she seemed of a sudden to be quite re-established in health.

Another day or two, and she was lying seriously ill—­so ill that her doctor summoned aid from Manchester.

What a distance between those memories, even the latest of them, and this room in Villa Sannazaro!  Its foreign aspect, its brightness, its comfort, the view from the windows, had from the first worked upon her with subtle influences of which she was unconscious.  By reason of her inexperience of life, it was impossible for Miriam to analyze her own being, and note intelligently the modifications it underwent.  Introspection meant to her nothing but debates held with conscience—­a technical conscience, made of religious precepts.  Original reflection, independent of these precepts, was to her very simply a form of sin, a species of temptation for which she had been taught to prepare herself.  With anxiety, she found herself slipping away from that firm ground whence she was won’t to judge all within and about her; more and more difficult