Younger and plainer girls had been married off by dozens, and she was nine-and-twenty, and still Miss Bart.
She was beginning to have fits of angry rebellion against fate, when she longed to drop out of the race and make an independent life for herself.
But what manner of life would it be?
She had barely enough money to pay her dress-makers' bills and her gambling debts; and none of the desultory interests which she dignified with the name of tastes was pronounced enough to enable her to live contentedly in obscurity.

Ah, no--she was too intelligent not to be honest with herself.

She knew that she hated dinginess as much as her mother had hated it, and to her last breath she meant to fight against it, dragging herself up again and again above its flood till she gained the bright pinnacles of success which presented such a slippery surface to her clutch..