In 1848 Mrs. Bray’s school came to an untimely end through the Revolution of that year and Dorothea returned home at the age of seventeen. Those who knew her at that time described her as “a grave and quiet girl, with a sweet serious expression and deliberate speech: also with a sunshiny smile and merry laugh on occasion. She was remarkable, even in a studious, sedentary family, for her love of reading and study.” According to one authority she was quite beautiful as a girl. One evening she and her sister Eliza went to a dance, Dorothea looking very lovely in a beautiful white dress. Eliza was dancing with a young man, who asked the name of that beautiful girl. “Oh!” said Eliza, delighted that he should admire Dorothea, “she’s my sister. Do you think she’s like me?”--“Good gracious, no!” blurted out the tactless young man. Eliza Beale used to tell this story with great zest, fully enjoying the reflection on her own looks. In one part of her autobiography Dorothea Beale speaks of the influences of her early life. “An aunt, my godmother, lived with us, and was often my friend in my childish troubles.... The strongest influence [on my inner life] was that of my sister Eliza. We were constantly together. She had a very lively imagination, and on most nights would tell me stories that she had invented. Early in the mornings she would transform our bedroom into some wild magic scene and we would play at Alexander the Great and ride Pegasus on the foot of our four-post bedstead.” Already she had begun to show some of the characteristics which were so marked in later life, her devotion to duty, her keen intellectual interests. She was prepared for Confirmation, in 1847, by the Rev. Charles Mackenzie, to whose teaching Dorothea felt she owed much. Of early religious influences and experiences she thus speaks in her MS. autobiography. “There was the faith of my parents, the morning and evening prayer. There was the Bible picture-book and the Sunday lessons. The church we went to was an old one, St. Helen’s, and at the entrance were the words: ‘This is none other than the House of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven’. There were high pews and the service was almost a duet between clergyman and clerk, yet I realised, even more than I ever have in the most beautiful cathedral and perfect services, that the Lord was in that place, even as Jacob realised in the desert what he had failed to find at home.” Religion with her was never allowed to be simply an affair of the emotions: it meant obedience, discipline, the rigid performance of duty, but it was also a source of the deepest emotions.