Well and good. She was not going to cheapen herself. She felt that even in the eyes of the natives—the well-to-do part, at least—she lost a little of her distinction when she was engaged to Dr. Mitchell. The engagement had been announced in The Times, The Morning Post, The Manchester Guardian², and the local News. No fear about its being known. And it cast a slight slur³ of vulgar familiarity over her. In Woodhouse, she knew, it elevated her in the common esteem⁴ tremendously. But she was no longer in Woodhouse. She was in Lancaster. And in Lancaster her engagement pigeonholed⁵ her. Apart from Dr. Mitchell she had a magic potentiality. Connected with him, she was a known and labelled quantity.

 

This she gathered from her contact with the local gentry⁶. The matron was a woman of family, who somehow managed, in her big, white, frilled cap, to be distinguished⁷ like an abbess of old. The really toney women of the place came to take tea in her room, and these little teas in the hospital were like a little elegant female conspiracy⁸. There was a slight flavour of art and literature about. The matron had known Walter Pater, in the somewhat remote past.

 

Alvina was admitted to these teas with the few women who formed the toney intellectual élite of this northern town. There was a certain freemasonry in the matron's room. The matron, a lady-doctor, a clergyman's daughter, and the wives of two industrial magnates of the place, these five, and then Alvina, formed the little group. They did not meet a great deal outside the hospital. But they always met with that curious female freemasonry which can form a law unto itself even among most conventional women. They talked as they would never talk before men, or before feminine outsiders. They threw aside the whole vestment of convention. They discussed plainly the things they thought about—even the most secret—and they were quite calm about the things they did—even the most impossible. Alvina felt that her

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