“There is plenty of time,” said Lostwithiel, “between now and the twenty-second of December--nearly three weeks. Time for you and your sister to get new frocks from London or Paris, Miss Crowther. You mean having new frocks, I suppose?” “One generally does have a new frock for a dance,” replied Belinda, “though the fashions this winter are so completely odious that I would much rather appear in a gown of my great-grandmother’s.” Lostwithiel smiled his slow secret smile high up in the fainter firelight. He was reflecting upon his notion of Miss Crowther’s great-grandmother, in linsey-wolsey, with a lavender print apron, a costume that would be hardly impressive at a Hunt Ball. He did not give the young lady credit for a great-grandmother from the Society point of view. There was the mother yonder--inoffensive respectability--the grandmother would be humbler--and the great-grandmother he imagined at the wash-tub, or cooking the noontide meal for an artisan husband. He had never yet realized the idea of numerous generations of middle-class life upon the same plane, the same dead level of prosperous commerce. Isola rose to take leave, after having let her tea get cold, and dropped half her cake on the Persian rug. She felt shyer in that house than in any other. She had a feeling that there she was weighed in the balance and found wanting; that unfriendly eyes were scrutinizing her gloves and hat, and appraising her features and complexion. She felt herself insignificant, colourless, insipid beside that brilliant Miss Crowther, with her vivid beauty, and her self-assured airs and graces. Tabitha urged her to be of good heart when she hinted at these feelings. “Why, Lord have mercy upon us, ma’am, however grand they may all look, it’s nothing but wool--only wool; and I heard there used to be a good deal of devil’s dust mixed with it, after this Mr. Crowther came into the business.” The dusk was thickening as she went along the short avenue which led to the gates. Mr. Crowther, having built his house in a wood, had been able to cut himself out a carriage drive, which gave him an avenue of more than two centuries’ growth, and thus imparted an air of spurious antiquity to his demesne. He felt, as he looked at the massive boles of those old Spanish chestnuts, as if he had belonged to the soil since the Commonwealth. Even the lodge was an important building, Tudor on one side, and monastic on the other; with that agreeable hodge-podge of styles which the modern architect loveth. It was a better house than the curate lived in, as he often told Miss Crowther.