In this way she learned a great many things vaguely through the talk of her sister. She learned that balls and other entertainments, such as, to her inexperienced fancy, had seemed nothing but pleasure, were not in reality intended, at least as their first object, for pleasure at all. Constance spoke of them as things to which one must go. “We looked in for an hour,” she would say. “Mamma thinks she ought to have half-a-dozen places to go to every evening,” with a tone in which there was more sense of injury than pleasure. Then there was the mysterious question of love, which was at once so simple and so awful a matter, on which there could be no doubt or question: that, it appeared, was quite a complicated affair, in which the lover, the hero, was transferred into “the man,” whose qualities had to be discovered and considered, as if he were a candidate for a public office. All this bewildered Frances more than can be imagined or described. Her sister’s arrival, and the disclosures involved in it, had broken up to her all the known lines of heaven and earth; and now that everything had settled down again, and these lines were beginning once more to be apparent, Frances felt that though they were wider, they were narrower too. She knew a great deal more; but knowledge only made that appear hard and unyielding which had been elastic and infinite. The vague and imaginary were a great deal more lovely than this, which, according to her sister’s revelation, was the real and true. Another very curious experience for Frances occurred when Mrs Durant and Mrs Gaunt, as in duty bound, and moved with lively curiosity, came to call and make acquaintance with Mr Waring’s new daughter. Constance regarded these visitors with languid curiosity, only half rising from her chair to acknowledge her introduction to them, and leaving Frances to answer the questions which they thought it only civil to put. Did she like Bordighera? “Oh yes; well enough,” Constance replied. “My sister thinks the people not so picturesque as she expected,” said Frances. “But of course she felt the delightful difference in the climate?” People, Mrs Durant understood, were suffering dreadfully from east wind in London. “Ah! one doesn’t notice in town,” said Constance. “My sister is not accustomed to living without comforts and with so little furniture. You know that makes a great difference,” said her anxious expositor and apologist. And then there would ensue a long pause, which the new-comer did nothing at all to break: and then the conversation fell into the ordinary discussion of who was at church on Sunday, how many new people from the hotels, and how disgraceful it was that some who were evidently English should either poke into the Roman Catholic places or never go to church at all.