Vast was the correspondence she held with all manner of representative people, seeking for information, accumulating reports, lectures, argumentative pamphlets, theoretic volumes, in mass altogether beyond her ability to cope with; nowadays, her secretary read and digested and summarised with tireless energy.

Lady Ogram had never cared much for reading; she admired Constance's quick intelligence and power of grappling with printed matter.

But that she had little faith in the future of her own sex, she would have been tempted to say: "There is the coming woman." Miss Bride's companionship was soon indispensable to her; she had begun to dread the thought of being left alone with her multiplying solicitudes and uncertainties.
Her great resource in these days was her savage hatred of Mr.Robb and his family, and of all in any way adhering to him.

Whenever she fixed her mind on that, all wider troubles fled into space, and she was the natural woman of her prime once more.

Since making the acquaintance of Dyce Lashmar, she had thought of little but this invigorating theme.