That is why women go deep into debt to their milliners,
and would sooner be dead in well-made graveclothes than alive in an
old-fashioned mantua."
Angela could not be in her sister's company for a month without discovering
that Lady Fareham's whole life was given up to the worship of the trivial.
She was kind, she was amiable, generous, even to recklessness. She was
not irreligious, heard Mass and went to confession as often as the hard
conditions of an alien and jealously treated Church would allow, had never
disputed the truth of any tenet that was taught her--but of serious views,
of an earnest consideration of life and death, husband and children,
Hyacinth Fareham was as incapable as her ten-year-old daughter. Indeed, it
sometimes seemed to Angela that the child had broader and deeper thoughts
than the mother, and saw her surroundings with a shrewder and clearer eye,
despite the natural frivolity of childhood, and the exuberance of a fine
physique.
It was not for the younger sister to teach the elder, nor did Angela deem
herself capable of teaching. Her nature was thoughtful and earnest: but she
lacked that experience of life which can alone give the thinker a broad
and philosophic view of other people's conduct.
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