Wilbraham had not erred when he described her as a sentimentalist with grievances. Sentimentalism was the shallows of her nature, and she had no depths. Her conversation ran continually upon the "big things," as she termed them, such as devotion, endurance, self-sacrifice, and the rest, in which qualities men were singularly deficient. She meant, however, only devotion to her, endurance of her, self-sacrifice for her, of which it was not unnatural that men should tire, seeing who it was that demanded them. Yet she had enjoyed her share, and more than her share. For though incapable of passion herself, she had in her youth possessed the trick of inspiring it, but without the power, perhaps through her own incapacity, of keeping it alive, and no doubt too because upon a moderate acquaintance she conveyed an impression of inherent falsity. For, being a sentimentalist, she lived in a false world, on the borders of a lie, never quite telling it perhaps, and certainly never quite not telling it. She was by nature exigent, for she was in her own eyes the pivot of her little world, and for the wider world beyond, she had no eyes whatever. And her exigence took amusing or irritating shapes according to the point of view of those who suffered it. For instance, you must never praise her costumes, of which she had many, and those worthy of praise, but the high qualities of her mind, which were few and often of no taste whatever. It should be added that she had always favoured an inferior before an equal. For it pleased her above all things to condescend, since she secured thus a double flattery, in the knowledge of her own condescension, and in the grateful humility of those to whom she condescended. It can be foreseen, then, what answers this woman,--who was tall, and still retained the elegance of her figure, and would have still retained the good looks of her face, but that it was written upon by many grievances--would give to Miranda's questions. "You can trust no men. You must bribe them with cajoleries; you must play the coquette; you must enlist their vanity. They are all trivial, and the big things do not appeal to them." Miranda listened. She was accustomed to Jane Holt, and had no longer a reasoned conception of her character. Habit had dulled her impressions. She remembered only that Jane Holt had had much experience of men wherein she herself was wofully deficient. Jane Holt embroidered her theme; a pretty display of petulance, the seemingly accidental disclosure of an ankle, a voluntary involuntary pressure of the arm, these things had power to persuade the male mind, such as it is, and to enmesh that worthless thing the male heart. "One might have a man for a friend, perhaps," suggested Miranda, hopefully. "My poor Miranda!" exclaimed Miss Holt. "No wonder your marriage was a failure. Men pretend friendship for a woman at times, but they mean something else."