The girl spoke to her father, but her eyes were caught instantly by the unusual apparition of the lady in the shop. Who was she? not an ordinary customer, not anybody with an order for picture frames. A flutter awoke in Janet’s breast. Was it perhaps somebody sent from the shop to offer that situation which was the dream of her fancy? a situation, she did not quite know what, varying as her hopes and sense of self-importance varied from that of a companion (which, the forewoman of the shop had told her, her manners and look were equal to--not to speak of her education) to that of a lady’s maid. Emigration was not an idea which pleased Janet. She was afraid of the sea, afraid of the unknown, and not at all desirous of being always at home, shut up within the circle of family duties and companionship. She wanted to see the world, as all young people had, she thought, a right to do. To go into the wilds had no charm for her. She had grown up in the close presence of all her father’s theories without being affected by one of them. She had heard him speak by the hour and had paid no attention. All his moral independence, the haughtiness of his determination to be his own master, and stand under subjection to no man, affected his child no more than to make her wish the more fervently for that “situation,” which would deliver her from the monotony of these “holdings forth.” Janet’s ideal of a happy existence was that of a large “establishment” where there would be a crowd of servants, elegant valets and splendid butlers at the feet of the pretty maid whom nobody would be able to tell from a lady--or perhaps a chance of catching the eye of the master of one of these fine gentlemen, who would make her a lady in earnest, with servants of her own. Nobody knew of these secret dreams which occupied her fancy, and grew and flourished in the atmosphere of the shop; but when her father called her suddenly, and she came down to see Lady Markham standing so exactly like (she thought) a lady whom the forewoman might have sent with the offer of a situation, her heart began to beat, and her head to turn round with excitement--excitement only not so great as that of the woman who stood gazing at her with wistful eyes, asking herself if this was the woman whom Paul preferred to all the world.