Rachel had had the palm of cleverness conceded to her ever since she

could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister

at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and

excelled in, the studies that were a toil to Grace. Subsequently, while

Grace had contented herself with the ordinary course of unambitious

feminine life, Rachel had thrown herself into the process of

self-education with all her natural energy, and carried on her favourite

studies by every means within her reach, until she considerably

surpassed in acquirements and reflection all the persons with whom she

came in frequent contact. It was a homely neighbourhood, a society well

born, but of circumscribed interests and habits, and little connected

with the great progressive world, where, however, Rachel's sympathies

all lay, necessarily fed, however, by periodical literature, instead of

by conversation or commerce with living minds.

She began by being stranded on the ignorance of those who surrounded

her, and found herself isolated as a sort of pedant; and as time went

on, the narrowness of interests chafed her, and in like manner left

her alone. As she grew past girlhood, the cui bono question had come to

interfere with her ardour in study for its own sake, and she felt the

influence of an age eminently practical and sifting, but with small

powers of acting. The quiet Lady Bountiful duties that had sufficed her

mother and sister were too small and easy to satisfy a soul burning at

the report of the great cry going up to heaven from a world of sin and

woe. The examples of successful workers stimulated her longings to be up

and doing, and yet the ever difficult question between charitable works

and filial deference necessarily detained her, and perhaps all the more

because it was not so much the fear of her mother's authority as of her

horror and despair, that withheld her from the decisive and eccentric

steps that she was always feeling impelled to take. Gentle Mrs. Curtis

had never been a visible power in her house, and it was through their

desire to avoid paining her that her government had been exercised over

her two daughters ever since their father's death, which had taken place

in Grace's seventeenth year. Both she and Grace implicitly accepted

Rachel's superiority as an unquestionable fact, and the mother, when

traversing any of her clever daughter's schemes, never disputed either

her opinions or principles, only entreated that these particular

developments might be conceded to her own weakness; and Rachel generally

did concede. She could not act; but she could talk uncontradicted, and

she hated herself for the enforced submission to a state of things that

she despised.




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