So far, during the eight years since she had left the school-room, she had always been "Miss Gresley," a little personage treated with consideration wherever she went, and choyée for her delicate humor and talent for conversation. She now experienced the interesting sensation, as novel to her as it is familiar to most of us, of being nobody, and she disliked it. The manners of the set in which she found herself also grated continually on her fastidious taste. She was first amazed and then indignant at hearing her old Middleshire friends, whose simplicity far surpassed that of her new acquaintance, denounced by the latter—without being acquainted with them except officially—as "fine," as caring only for "London people," and as being "tuft-hunters," because they frequently entertained at their houses persons of rank, to half of whom they were related. All this was new to Hester. She discovered that, though she might pay visits at these houses, she must never mention them, as it was considered the height of vulgarity to speak of people of rank.
Mrs. Gresley, who had been quite taken aback when the first of these invitations came, felt it her duty to warn Hester against a love of rank, reminding her that it was a very bad thing to get a name for running after titled people.
"James and I have always kept clear of that," she remarked, with dignity. "For my part, I dare say you will think me very old-fashioned, but I must own I never can see that people with titles or wealth are one bit nicer or pleasanter than those without them."
Hester agreed.
"And," continued Mrs. Gresley, "it has always been our aim to be independent, not to bow down before any one. If I am unworldly, it is because I had the advantage of parents who impressed on me the hollowness of all social distinctions. If the Pratts were given a title to-morrow I should behave exactly the same to them as I do now."
If Lady Susan Gresley had passed her acquaintance through a less exclusive sieve, Hester might have had the advantage of hearing all these well-worn sentiments, and of realizing the point of view of a large number of her fellow-creatures before she became an inconspicuous unit in their midst.
But if Mrs. Gresley was pained by Hester's predilection for the society of what she called "swells" (the word, though quite extinct in civilized parts, can occasionally be found in country districts), she was still more pained by the friendships Hester formed with persons whom her sister-in-law considered "not quite."
Mrs. Gresley was always perfectly civil, and the Pratts imperfectly so, to Miss Brown, the doctor's invalid sister. But Hester made friends with her, in spite of the warnings of Mrs. Gresley that kindness was one thing and intimacy another.
"The truth is," Mrs. Gresley would say, "Hester loves adulation, and as she can't get it from the Pratts and us, she has to go to those below her in the social scale, like Miss Brown, who will give it to her. Miss Brown may be very cultivated. I dare say she is, but she makes up to Hester."
Sybell Loftus, who lived close at hand at Wilderleigh, across the Prone, was one of the very few besides Miss Brown among her new acquaintances who hailed Hester at once as a kindred spirit, to the unconcealed surprise of the Pratts and the Gresleys. Sybell adored Hester's book, which the Gresleys and Pratts considered rather peculiar "as emanating from the pen of a clergyman's sister." She enthusiastically suggested to Hester several improvements which might easily be made in it, which would have changed its character altogether. She even intrenched on the sacred precinct of a married woman's time to write out the openings of several romances, which she was sure Hester, with her wonderful talent, could build up into magnificent works of art. She was always running over to the Vicarage to confide to Hester the unique thoughts which had been vouchsafed to her while contemplating a rose, or her child, or her husband, or all three together.