Not hard, the heart of Isabel Clarendon, but very human, very womanly. It could not throw open its gates unreservedly to this child who had been forced upon her. The tears she shed at Ada’s side were bitter and choking; they brought no solace of moved tenderness. It was the first and the last of such scenes. A couple of years later Ada looked back upon her part in it with that brain-scorching shame to which an intense nature is so subject in recalling immature impulsiveness. For a week or two at most it made anything of sensible difference in her own or Mrs. Clarendon’s behaviour, then the unconquerable coldness returned, with an appearance of finality. Their conversation limited itself to superficial matters, and even here occasions of difference not seldom offered, exacting self-control on both sides. Lacking conscious spiritual life, and all but void of intellectual interests, Isabel Clarendon could hardly be credited with principles, but for that reason her prejudices were the stronger. As Ada grew in mental stature, she found it difficult at all times to avoid involuntary collision with these prejudices, or even to refrain from impatient comment of a kind very irritating to Isabel. Small points of social observance first began to excite the girl’s indignant or ironical remark, then graver matters of tradition arose between them--stumbling-blocks for the one, to the other accepted sign-posts. Ada read much, and procured books from very various sources; even had Isabel been sufficiently familiar with the characteristics of authors to judge from their outsides the books she saw lying about, she did not feel strong enough to attempt to impose restrictions on her ward’s reading; such a step would assuredly have led to conflicts, and from this Isabel shrank. Ada’s tastes seemed to her deplorably masculine; it was very likely, she said to herself, that no positive harm would result to such a nature from literature poisonous to ordinary girls. Fortunately Mrs. Clarendon’s conception of responsibility was not that ever-besieging consciousness which leaves some women no rest in a position of superintendence. The instinct of procrastination was strong in her; a thought which troubled her she could, without much difficulty, set aside for entertainment on the morrow. Promising herself that some day she would have a long and very serious talk with Ada on the grave matters which she ordinarily shunned, for the present she allowed the girl to take her course, and the opportunity to which she often mentally referred never seemed to present itself.