Chapter One
Since I can do no good because a woman,
Reach constantly at something that is near it.
— Beaumont and Fletcher:
THE MAID'S TRAGEDY
MISS BROOKE had that kind of beauty which seems to be
thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely
formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in
which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile
as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from
her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the
impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible, — or from one of our
elder poets, — in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper. She was usually
spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her
sister Celia had more common-sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely
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