Ask Grace if I did." "Was she not saucy to Mrs.Boyce, Miss Crawley ?" "She said that Mr.Boyce scratches his nose in church," said Grace.
"So he does; and goes to sleep, too." "If you told Mrs.Boyce that, Lily, I think she was quite right to scold you." Such was Miss Lily Dale, with whom Grace Crawley was staying;--Lily Dale with whom Mr.John Eames, of the Income-tax Office, had been so long and so steadily in love, that he was regarded among his fellow-clerks as a miracle of constancy,--who had, herself, in former days been so unfortunate in love as to have been regarded among her friends in the country as the most ill-used of women.

As John Eames had been able to be comfortable in life,--that is to say, not utterly a wretch,--in spite of his love, so had she managed to hold up her head, and live as other young women live, in spite of her misfortune.
But as it may be said also that his constancy was true constancy, although he knew how to enjoy the good things of the world, so also had her misfortune been a true misfortune, although she had been able to bear it without much outer show of shipwreck.

For a few days,--for a week or two, when the blow first struck her, she had been knocked down, and the friends who were nearest to her had thought that she would never again stand erect upon her feet.

But she had been very strong, stout at heart, of a fixed purpose, and capable of resistance against oppression.

Even her own mother had been astonished, and sometimes almost dismayed, by the strength of her will.