There was no hurry and flutter about her now as there used to be; none of that indiscriminate enthusiasm, which in her aunt's eyes branded her as a poor relation who "had never been used to anything nice." She expressed her appreciation of things smilingly and sweetly, with more or less of her natural bright frankness, but with a well-bred moderation and serenity that might have become a duchess. To please her husband she wore rich raiment, "composed" by the most distinguished Parisian artists, and it symbolised the change that all her individuality seemed to have undergone. She was no longer a girl, an _ingenue_, a bread-and-butter miss, a pretty little nobody; she was an experienced and cultured woman, a leader of society, fully equipped for that high position, with a just appreciation of her own importance, and relatively to that of other people's. Indeed, there seemed to certain persons--Miss Brownlow amongst others--indications in her reticent and reposeful manner of a tendency to be exclusive, and to think a great deal too much of herself. Mrs. Hardy, who was immensely interested in the unforeseen development, was beyond measure gratified by it--more especially as the young wife was evidently on the best of terms with her husband, though she had the good taste to refrain from drawing public attention to the fact. Many apprehensions were set at rest by the sight of her entering a room on his arm, carefully and beautifully dressed, as if she had enjoyed dressing herself, and twinkling with diamonds everywhere, responding to respectful greetings with quiet grace, moving in her comparatively higher sphere as if she felt thoroughly at home in it. It seemed to the anxious matron that an end had been reached which justified all the means that had been taken to compass it. Mrs. Reade was not so satisfied. She looked at the change in Rachel from another point of view. She did not like to see a girl who had been exceptionally girlish, turned into a sober woman with such unnatural rapidity. Her sister Laura had come home, and was now settled at Kew, giving entertainments in a severely-appointed high-art house; she had had quite as much of the education of travel as Rachel--perhaps more, inasmuch as her young husband was a dabbler in _bric-a-bric_, and had a taste for old churches, and palaces, and pictures; whereas Mr. Kingston's interest in foreign cities, however famous, had chiefly concerned itself with the quality of the society and the cuisine of the hotels. But Laura, though stored with information and experience, and lately the happy mother of twin daughters, was much the same as she had been in her maiden days--cheerful, enterprising, a rider of harmless hobbies, a great believer in herself, and in the force and variety of her fascinations. She had improved and developed, of course, but the experiences of travel had not changed her as Rachel was changed.