These people too, these coarse country people, despised her and laughed at her! The thought was more than she could bear.

She sprang up, feeling as if she were suffocating, and walked up and down the little room with hurried and nervous steps.

Then suddenly there came into her mind one sentence of her mother's that Dame Hartley had repeated: "Hilda has a really noble nature--" What was the rest?
Something about triumphing over the faults and follies which lay outside.

Had her mother really said that?
Did she believe, trust in, her silly daughter?
The girl stood still, with clasped hands and bowed head.
The tumult within her seemed to die away, and in its place something was trembling into life, the like of which Hilda Graham had never known, never thought of, before; faint and timid at first, but destined to gain strength and to grow from that one moment,--a wish, a hope, finally a resolve..