die? " Kate demanded with her clear face. " How
does such stuff, in this hole, get to you?"

She had no sooner spoken than she asked her
self what had become of the grace to which she
had sacrificed. Marian certainly did little to save
it, and nothing indeed was so inconsequent as her
ground of complaint. She desired her to " work"
Lancaster Gate as she believed that scene of abund
ance could be worked; but she now didn't see
why advantage should be taken of the bloated con
nection to put an affront on her own poor home.
She appeared in fact for the moment to take the
position that Kate kept her in her " hole " and
then heartlessly reflected on her being in it. Yet
she didn't explain how she had picked up the re
port on which her sister had challenged her so
that it was thus left to her sister to see in it, once
more, a sign of the creeping curiosity of the Miss
Condrips. They lived in a deeper hole than Mar
ian, but they kept their ear to the ground, they
spent their days in prowling, whereas Marian, in
garments and shoes that seemed steadily to grow
looser and larger, never prowled. There were times
when Kate wondered if the Miss Condrips were
offered her by fate as a warning for her own future
to be taken as showing her what she herself
might become at forty if she let things too reck
lessly go. What was expected of her by others
and by so many of them could, all the same, on
occasion, present itself as beyond a joke; and this

[[48]]

p047 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p048w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p049

v?