But as for Judith Quixano, and for many women placed as she, it is difficult to conceive a training, an existence, more curiously limited, more completely provincial than hers. Her outlook on life was of the narrowest; of the world, of London, of society beyond her own set, it may be said that she had seen nothing at first hand; had looked at it all, not with her own eyes, but with the eyes of Reuben Sachs. She could scarcely remember the time when she and Reuben had not been friends. Ever since she was a little girl in the schoolroom, and he a charming lad in his first terms at the University, he had thought it worth while to talk to her, to confide to her his hopes, plans and ambitions; to direct her reading and lend her books. Books were a luxury in the Leuniger household. We all have our economies, even the richest of us; and the Leunigers, who begrudged no money for food, clothes or furniture, who went constantly into the stalls of the theatre, without considering the expense, regarded every shilling spent on books as pure extravagance. Reuben indeed was the only person who had any conception of Judith’s possibilities, or, of those surrounding her, who even estimated at its full her rich and stately beauty. Their friendship, unusual enough in a society which retains, in relation to women at least, so many traces of orientalism, had sprung up at first unnoticed in the intimacy of family life. It was not till the last year or two that it had attracted any serious attention. Adelaide Cohen openly did everything in her power to check it; and even Mrs. Sachs, with her rooted belief in her son’s discretion, her conviction that he would never fail to act up to his creed of doing the very best for himself, grew anxious at times, and was almost glad of the chance which had sent him off to the antipodes. Aloud to her daughter, she scouted the notion of any serious cause for alarm. “It is for the girl’s sake I am sorry. That sort of thing does a girl a great deal of harm. It is time she was married.” “She has no money. Very likely she won’t marry at all,” cried Adelaide, who was dyspeptic and subject to fits of bad temper. Meanwhile Judith, acquiescent, receptive, appreciative, took the good things this friendship offered her, and shut her eyes to the future. Not, as she believed, that she ever for a moment deceived herself. That would scarcely have been possible in the atmosphere in which she breathed. She had known from the beginning, how could she fail to know? that Reuben must do great things for himself in every relation of life; must ultimately climb to inaccessible heights where she could not hope to follow. Her pride and her humility went hand in hand, and she prided herself on her own good sense which made any mistake in the matter impossible. And that he was so sensible, was what she particularly admired in Reuben.