Little as Fenwick talked about Madame de Pastourelles, Phoebe understood perfectly that she was a woman of high education and refinement, and that her stored and subtle mind was at once an attraction and a cause of humiliation to John.

And through his rare stories of the Findon household and the Findon dinner-parties, the wife dimly perceived a formidable world, bristling with strange acquirements and accomplishments, in which he, perhaps, was beginning to find a place, thanks to his art; while she, his obscure and ignorant wife, must resign herself to being for ever shut out from it--to knowing it from his report only.

How could she ever hold her own with such people?
He would talk with them, paint them, dine with them, while she sat at home--Carrie's nurse, and the domestic drudge.
And yet she was of that type which represents perhaps the most ambitious element in the lower middle class.

It had been a great matter that she, a small farmer's daughter, should pass her examinations and rise to be a teacher in Miss Mason's school.

She had had her triumphs and conceits; had been accustomed to think herself clever and successful, to hold her head high amongst her schoolmates.
Whereas now, if she tried to talk of art or books, she was hotly aware that everything she said was, in John's eyes, pretentious or absurd.