Mrs.Ludlow's mental motions were sufficiently various.

At one moment she thought it would be so natural for that young woman to come home and take a house in New York--the Rossiters', for instance, which had an elegant conservatory and was just round the corner from her own; at another she couldn't conceal her surprise at the girl's not marrying some member of one of the great aristocracies.

On the whole, as I have said, she had fallen from high communion with the probabilities.

She had taken more satisfaction in Isabel's accession of fortune than if the money had been left to herself; it had seemed to her to offer just the proper setting for her sister's slightly meagre, but scarce the less eminent figure.

Isabel had developed less, however, than Lily had thought likely--development, to Lily's understanding, being somehow mysteriously connected with morning-calls and evening-parties.
Intellectually, doubtless, she had made immense strides; but she appeared to have achieved few of those social conquests of which Mrs.
Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies.