Her nose was straight and like her mother's, whereas her sisters had unfortunately gone to their father for their noses and got them of an unwomanly hugeness. Mrs. Folyat selected Jessie for Frederic, and soon perceived, what had escaped her before, that she was in love with him. Jessie was two years older than Frederic. She was just a little austere in temperament, singularly pure and innocent in mind. The wave of religious fervour which follows on confirmation had endured with her, and she had secretly aspired to become a nun until the advent of Frederic. Then, having escaped the wasteful expenditure of affection upon folly that fills the adolescence of most young women, she suffered a tremendous upheaval. Living with a prying, curious family, she thrust her emotion away and tried to cover it, and affected a frivolity which was entirely foreign to her. Alternately she avoided and sought Frederic's company, as first one and then the other procedure seemed to her the less conspicuous. Her labours were all in vain, for Minna knew her condition almost as soon as she did herself, and made no secret of it. As time went on Jessie grew accustomed to the presence of love in her life, realised that it would be impossible for her to take any other husband than Frederic, and resigned herself with truly Christian fortitude and patience to wait until that happened which she desired should happen. She had never enjoyed any confidence with her mother, whom she had been brought up to regard as the most beautiful lady in the world, the "very pinnacle of human virtue." (The phrase was her father's, often on his lips, and Minna always referred to Mrs. Clibran-Bell as "The Pinnacle.") It may be ennobling and purifying to idealise your womenkind, but if your womenkind accept the position they are rather apt to believe, with disastrous results, that it is more blessed to receive than to give. Certain it is that if Robert Clibran-Bell had an ideal, he never had a wife, and that his children never had a mother.