It was the phantom, or rather the embodiment of their First Circle, that they hated in the woman.

She took heroes from the journals read by servant-maids; she thought highly of the Court of Aldermen; she went on public knees to the aristocracy; she was proud, in fact, of all City appetites.

What, though none saw the peculiar sting?
They felt it; and one virtue in possessing an 'ideal' is that, lodging in you as it does, it insists upon the interior being furnished by your personal satisfaction, and not by the blindness or stupidity of the outer world.

Thus, in one direction, an ideal precludes humbug.
The ladies might desire to cloak facts, but they had no pleasure in deception.

They had the feminine power of extinguishing things disagreeable, so long as nature or the fates did them no violence.