She was a good-looking woman, and a clever woman too, only not quite clever enough to find out one slight fact--that there might be any body in the world superior to herself.
_"Set down your value at your own huge rate, The world will pay it"_ -- for a time.

And so the world had paid it pretty well to Miss Gascoigne, but was beginning a little to weary of her; except fond Miss Grey, who still thought that, as there never was a man like "dear Arnold," so there was not a woman any where to compare with "dear Henrietta." There is always something pathetic in this sort of alliance between two single women unconnected by blood.

It implies a substitution for better things--marriage or kindred ties; and has in some cases a narrowing tendency.

No two people, not even married people, can live alone together for a number of years without sinking into a sort of double selfishness, ministering to one another's fancies, humors, and even faults in a way that is not possible, or probable, in the wider or wholesomer life of a family.

And if, as is almost invariably the case-- indeed otherwise such a tie between women could not long exist--the stronger governs the weaker, one domineers and the other obeys, the result is bad for both.