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 she did deeds in point, deeds which, when done, proved to be landmarks, in a perfect row, on her route towards the unknown destination. This encouraged her to believe that the future would help her by showing a tendency to create itself.

The visit of Keble's family had proved a negative hint as to the nature of her goal, for clearly her direction was not to be one that led into a bog of kind, complacent social superiorishness. Whatever errors she might make she would not end by being gently futile, like her mother-in-law; she would not turn into a wet blanket like Girlie, nor a noisy, nosy Christmas-cracker like Mrs. Windrom. Alice Eveley had been the most satisfactory woman of the four, yet Louise particularly hoped she would not land in Alice's bog; for Alice, while intelligent, had turned none of her intelligence to account; while bright, she shed only a reflected light; while frank, she could politely dissemble when downrightness would have been more humane; and while sympathetic, she held to conventions which had it in them to insist upon mercilessness. Alice was, one could sincerely admit, a jolly good sort, but only because she had not opposed favoring circumstances of birth, wealth, and privilege. Girlie was a less jolly good sort because she had avoided even the gentle propelling force of favoring circumstances and loitered in back eddies,—she had been "dragged" to Italy, for instance, and had brought back no definite impression save that of a campanile which had made recollection easy for