This was the point at which Priscilla’s review of the past began while she sat on her chair that afternoon, when for the first time for a year she had a sense of peace--a sense of her life being cleansed from some impurity that had been clinging to it. It was the sense of the rain-washed air that induced this feeling; and she smiled while she remembered how, even so long ago as the time of which she was thinking, she had been amused by the seriousness with which her pale mother and her aunt Emily discussed the likelihood there was that when the fact of her being “finished” at that expensive school should be reasonably presented to the right people at Framsby, it would prove irresistible as a claim upon their compassion, so that they would come to visit her in flocks. Alas! she had gone to the expensive school and had learned when there a great number of things--some of them not even charged for in the long list of extras; but still she was only regarded by the great people of Framsby as a farmer’s daughter. Nay, several of the wrong set who had been on visiting terms with Mrs. Wadhurst took umbrage at the girl’s being sent to a school to which they could not afford to send their daughters; and they talked of the great evils that frequently resulted from a girl being educated “above her station”--Priscilla remembered the ridiculous phrase for many days. But whatever their ideas on proportionate education may have been, Priscilla was educated. She took good care that she had everything that her father’s money was paid for her to acquire. She did not mean to be over-exacting, but the truth was that she had a passion for learning everything that could be taught to her; and she easily took every prize that it was possible for her to take at the school. But still the best set showed no signs of taking her up; and whatever chance she had of this form of rapture vanished on that day when, at a local bazaar, a young Austrian prince who spoke no English, was a visitor. He had been brought by Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst, but that lady, having another engagement in the town, had asked one of the best set to lead him to some person who could speak German. But a full parade of all the members of the best set failed to yield even one person who could speak one word of that language. They were all smiling profusely, but they smiled in English, and the prince knew no English. Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst was in despair, when suddenly Miss Caffyn, the daughter of the Rector of St. Mary’s in the Meadows, brought up, without a word of warning, Priscilla Wadhurst, offering the great lady a personal guarantee that she would have no difficulty with the prince.