I could live there on little enough, and work, and feel free.

Of course, there's really no reason why I shouldn't.

I have been feeling so bound and helpless; and now that nobody has any right to hinder me, you think it would be the wise thing ?' Alma had occasionally complained to her friend, as she did the other evening to Harvey Rolfe, that easy circumstances were not favourable to artistic ambition, but no very serious disquiet had ever declared itself in her ordinary talk.

The phrases she now used, and the look that accompanied them, caused Sibyl some amusement.

Only two years older than Alma, Mrs.Carnaby enjoyed a more than proportionate superiority in knowledge of the world; her education had been more steadily directed to that end, and her natural aptitude for the study was more pronounced.