ADMIRED and courted though she was, Marie Grubbe soon found that, while she had escaped from the nursery, she was not fully¹ admitted to the circles of the grown up. For all the flatteries lavished² on them, such young maidens⁴ were kept in their own place in society. They were made to feel it by a hundred trifles that in themselves meant nothing, but when taken together meant a great deal. First of all, the children were insufferably familiar, quite like their equals. And then the servants—there was a well-defined difference in the manner of the old footman when he took the cloak of a maid or a matron, and the faintest shade in the obliging smile of the chambermaid showed her sense of whether she was waiting on a married or an unmarried woman. The free-and-easy tone which the half-grown younkers permitted themselves was most unpleasant, and the way in which snubbings and icy looks simply slid off from them was enough to make one despair.

She liked best the society of the younger men, for even when they were not in love with her, they would show her the most delicate attention and say the prettiest things with a courtly deference⁵ that quite raised her in her own estimation,—though to be sure it was tiresome⁶ when she found that they did it chiefly to keep in practice. Some of the older gentlemen were simply intolerable with their fulsome⁷ compliments and their mock gallantry, but the married women were worst of all, especially the brides. The encouraging, though a bit preoccupied⁸ glance, the slight condescending⁹ nod with head to one side, and the smile—half pitying, half jeering—with which they would listen to her—it was insulting! Moreover, the conduct of the - 99 - girls themselves was not of a kind to raise their position. They would never stand together, but if one could

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