She had
begun to sigh for somebody further on in manhood. Stephen was
hardly enough of a man.
Perhaps there was a proneness to inconstancy in her nature--a
nature, to those who contemplate it from a standpoint beyond the
influence of that inconstancy, the most exquisite of all in its
plasticity and ready sympathies. Partly, too, Stephen's failure
to make his hold on her heart a permanent one was his too timid
habit of dispraising himself beside her--a peculiarity which,
exercised towards sensible men, stirs a kindly chord of attachment
that a marked assertiveness would leave untouched, but inevitably
leads the most sensible woman in the world to undervalue him who
practises it. Directly domineering ceases in the man, snubbing
begins in the woman; the trite but no less unfortunate fact being
that the gentler creature rarely has the capacity to appreciate
fair treatment from her natural complement. The abiding
perception of the position of Stephen's parents had, of course, a
little to do with Elfride's renunciation. To such girls poverty
may not be, as to the more worldly masses of humanity, a sin in
itself; but it is a sin, because graceful and dainty manners
seldom exist in such an atmosphere. Few women of old family can
be thoroughly taught that a fine soul may wear a smock-frock, and
an admittedly common man in one is but a worm in their eyes. John
Smith's rough hands and clothes, his wife's dialect, the necessary
narrowness of their ways, being constantly under Elfride's notice,
were not without their deflecting influence.
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