She knew that to be Lady Huddersfield was to take a high seat in Vanity Fair. The Huddersfields belonged to the old order of society, to that inner circle of the great who never open their door indiscriminately to the Jew and the mining millionaire. People laughed at them and called them pompous and dull, but there was a high serenity among them nevertheless. She might have married half a dozen times had she so chosen. Her income was large enough to make her a small heiress, at any rate to be an appreciable factor in the case, besides which her birth was unexceptionable. It was known that when Lady Linquest fluttered away to another world, the old lady's money would come to her niece. But position merely, rank rather, did not attract a girl who already went wherever she chose. And among the men in society who had offered her marriage, or were prepared to do so, she found no one capable of satisfying her brain. Poyntz did this. She found power in him, strength, purpose. She knew that, in whatever station of life he was, the man was finely tempered, high in that aristocracy of intellect which some people say is the only aristocracy there is. She was conscious of all this, but, especially since she had been settled in the vicarage as a home, she was becoming conscious of many other influences at work upon her. Religion, the personal giving of one's self to God, was tinging all her life and actions now. Hour by hour, she found herself drawing nearer to the Cross. Her progress had become a matter of practical experience. It was impossible to live with the people she was among, to watch every detail of their lives, to find _exactly where the motive power and the sustaining power came from_, without casting in her lot with them in greater or less degree. Every day she found some hold upon the outside world was loosened, something she had imagined had great value in her eyes suddenly seemed quite worthless! Looked at in the light that was beginning to shine upon her, she was frequently surprised beyond measure to find how worthless most things were! Her brain was keen, cool, and logical. Hitherto she had refused to draw an inference--no proof, by the way, of any want of logical skill;--now she was drawing it. She was great and intimate friends with the two assistant priests, Stephens and King. Stephens was engaged to a girl in the country, King belonged to some confraternity of celibates. Both were high-minded men, who appreciated to the full the charm of cultured feminine society and found her drawing-room a most pleasant oasis now and then. And every one at the clergy-house began to see a great deal of Mr. Carr. The lonely man found companionship and sympathy there. He found intellectual men, university men like himself, with whom he could talk. He had been intellectually starving in Hornham, and good brains rust unless they have some measure of intercourse with their kind.