In any case she would have felt it as a slight that her friend should have married without her assistance, and so far outside the charmed circle of Thurston Square.

She herself was for the moment disappointed with Anne.

Anne had once taken them all so seriously.

It was her solemn joy in Mrs.Eliott and her circle that had enabled her young superiority to put up so long with the provincial hospitalities of Scale on Humber.

They, the slender aristocracy of Thurston Square, were the best that Scale had to offer her, and they had given her of their best.