For the time being she had no home.  To Constance she was ’paying a visit.’

Constance did not appear to realize the awful conditions of dirt, decay, and provinciality in which she was living.  Even Constance’s house was extremely inconvenient, dark, and no doubt unhealthy.  Cellar-kitchen, no hall, abominable stairs, and as to hygiene, simply mediaeval.  She could not understand why Constance had remained in the house.  Constance had plenty of money and might live where she liked, and in a good modern house.  Yet she stayed in the Square.  “I daresay she’s got used to it,” Sophia thought leniently.  “I daresay I should be just the same in her place.”  But she did not really think so, and she could not understand Constance’s state of mind.

Certainly she could not claim to have ‘added up’ Constance yet.  She considered that her sister was in some respects utterly provincial—­what they used to call in the Five Towns a ‘body.’  Somewhat too diffident, not assertive enough, not erect enough; with curious provincial pronunciations, accents, gestures, mannerisms, and inarticulate ejaculations; with a curious narrowness of outlook!  But at the same time Constance was very shrewd, and she was often proving by some bit of a remark that she knew what was what, despite her provinciality.  In judgments upon human nature they undoubtedly thought alike, and there was a strong natural general sympathy between them.  And at the bottom of Constance was something fine.  At intervals Sophia discovered herself secretly patronizing Constance, but reflection would always cause her to cease from patronage and to examine her own defences.  Constance, besides being the essence of kindness, was no fool.  Constance could see through a pretence, an absurdity, as quickly as any one.  Constance did honestly appear to Sophia to be superior to any Frenchwoman that she had ever encountered.  She saw supreme in Constance that quality which she had recognized in the porters at Newhaven on landing—­the quality of an honest and naive goodwill, of powerful simplicity.  That quality presented itself to her as the greatest in the world, and it seemed to be in the very air of England.  She could even detect it in Mr. Critchlow, whom, for the rest, she liked, admiring the brutal force of his character.  She pardoned his brutality to his wife.  She found it proper.  “After all,” she said, “supposing he hadn’t married her, what would she have been?  Nothing but a slave!  She’s infinitely better off as his wife.  In fact she’s lucky.  And it would be absurd for him to treat her otherwise than he does treat her.”  (Sophia did not divine that her masterful Critchlow had once wanted Maria as one might want a star.)

But to be always with such people!  To be always with Constance!  To be always in the Bursley atmosphere, physical and mental!