"This is our London way," she said.

But Rhoda was most disconcerted when she heard Mrs.Wicklow relate that her daughter and Dahlia were out together, and say, that she had no doubt they had found some pleasant and attentive gentleman for a companion, if they had not gone purposely to meet one.

Her thoughts of her sister were perplexed, and London seemed a gigantic net around them both.
"Yes, that's the habit with the girls up here," said Anthony; "that's what fine bonnets mean." Rhoda dropped into a bitter depth of brooding.

The savage nature of her virgin pride was such that it gave her great suffering even to suppose that a strange gentleman would dare to address her sister.

She half-fashioned the words on her lips that she had dreamed of a false Zion, and was being righteously punished.