She had that air of indifference to their little looks and whispered comments which is surest to disarm all the critics of a small tattling community.

On the other hand, she came to this school to learn, and not to play; and the modest and more plainly dressed girls, whose fathers did not sell by the cargo, or keep victualling establishments for some hundreds of people, considered her as rather in sympathy with them than with the daughters of the rough-and-tumble millionnaires who were grappling and rolling over each other in the golden dust of the great city markets.
She did not mean to belong exclusively to either of their sets.

She came with that sense of manifold deficiencies, and eager ambition to supply them, which carries any learner upward, as if on wings, over the heads of the mechanical plodders and the indifferent routinists.

She learned, therefore, in a way to surprise the experienced instructors.

Her somewhat rude sketching soon began to show something of the artist's touch.