All that, so that the grand creature might have a rim of pure white to his coat-sleeves for a day! It was inevitable.

But the grand creature must never know.

The shame necessary to his splendour must be concealed from him, lest he might be offended.

And this was woman's loyalty! Her ideas concerning the business of domesticity were now mixed and opposing and irreconcileable, and she began to suspect that the bases of society might be more complex and confusing than in her youthful downrightness she had imagined.
II "Well, you've got your way!" said Mrs.Lessways, with a certain grim, disdainful cheerfulness, from which benevolence was not quite absent.
The drastic treatment accorded to her cold seemed to have done it good.
At any rate she had not resumed the flannel petticoat, and the nasal symptoms were much less pronounced.
"Got my way ?" Hilda repeated, at a loss and newly apprehensive.
Mother and daughter were setting tea.

Florrie had been doing very well, but she was not yet quite equal to her situation, and the mistresses were now performing her lighter duties while she changed from the offensive drudge to the neat parlour-maid.