“But you are fifty times as good!” cried Kate; “and I believe in my heart that because you are so good and so patient, mamma does love you a little bit; while as for the rest of us--but what is the use of thinking about it?”--dashing a tear impetuously from her eyes as she asked herself the painful question. “Thinking over it won’t give one affection or kindness or sympathy; so I for one shall try to do without what would--at least so I fancy--make one contented anywhere and everywhere.” The simple philosophy of the girl of seventeen, though in some respects rational enough, was, however, based upon very erroneous principles. The example of her more highly-valued sister might have demonstrated to her that “patience does its perfect work,” and that the most selfish of mortals, and those least to be affected by the claims of kindred and the universal prejudices of consanguinity, can yet be influenced, both as regards their conduct and their sensibilities, by the deference which real goodness never fails to obtain for those who, knowing what is right, do, as the poet adds, “always practise what they know.” CHAPTER XVIII. DISAPPOINTMENT. The first sight of No. 23 Bolton-square proved rather _disenchantant_ to the two young ladies, who for the last five weeks had talked and thought of but little else than the coming glories of the season. As they approached the sights and _scents_ of London, a dense fog, as it appeared to the novices, but which was, in fact, simply an easterly wind laden with dull yellow smoke, shrouded as with a veil every distant object on which they looked. “This never can be London; and London, too, in the month of May,” thought Kate, as she looked out from the window of the railway-carriage on an atmosphere thick with discoloured smoke, through the mists of which the summits of sundry towers and steeples, together with the outlines of some nearer buildings, were dimly visible.