Not _how_ but _how much_, is all the question now," she concluded, flattering herself she had made a good point.
"Don't think me rude, please, aunt: I am really wishing to understand--but, if Mrs.Cropper is not a lady, how can Mary Marston not be one?
She is as different from Mrs.Croppor as one woman can be from another." "Because she has not the position in society," replied Mrs.Wardour, enveloping her nothing in flimsy reiteration and self-contradiction.
"And Mrs.Cropper has the position ?" ventured Letty, with a little palpitation from fear of offending.
"Apparently so," answered Mrs.Wardour.But her inquiring pupil did not feel much enlightened.

Letty had not the logic necessary to the thinking of the thing out; or to the discovery that, like most social difficulties, hers was merely one of the upper strata of a question whose foundation lies far too deep for what is called Society to perceive its very existence.

And hence it is no wonder that Society, abetted by the Church, should go on from generation to generation talking murderous platitudes about it.
But, although such was her reasoning beforehand, heart had so far overcome habit and prejudice with Mrs.Wardour, that, convinced on the first interview of the high tone and good influence of Mary, she had gradually come to put herself in the way of seeing her as often as she came, ostensibly to herself that she might prevent any deterioration of intercourse; and although she always, on these occasions, played the grand lady, with a stateliness that seemed to say, "Because of your individual worth, I condescend, and make an exception, but you must not imagine I receive your class at Thornwick," she had almost entirely ceased making remarks upon the said class in Letty's hearing.
On her part, Letty had by this time grown so intimate with Mary as to open with her the question upon which her aunt had given her so little satisfaction; and this same Sunday afternoon, as they sat in the arbor at the end of the long yew hedge in the old garden, it had come up again between them; for, set thinking by Letty's bewilderment, Mary had gone on thinking, and had at length laid hold of the matter, at least by the end that belonged to _her_.
"I can not consent, Letty," she said, "to trouble my mind about it as you do.

I can not afford it.

Society is neither my master nor my servant, neither my father nor my sister; and so long as she does not bar my way to the kingdom of heaven, which is the only society worth getting into, I feel no right to complain of how she treats me.