Page:The Europeans (1st edition) Volume 1.djvu/263

 Lizzie reappeared, to say that her mother would now be happy to receive Madame Münster; and the Baroness followed her to Mrs. Acton's apartment. Eugenia reflected, as she went, that it was not the affectation of impertinence that made her dislike this young lady, for on that ground she could easily have beaten her. It was not an aspiration on the girl's part to rivalry, but a kind of laughing, childishly-mocking indifference to the results of comparison. Mrs. Acton was an emaciated, sweet-faced woman of five and fifty, sitting with pillows behind her and looking out on a clump of hemlocks. She was very modest, very timid and very ill; she made Eugenia feel grateful that she herself was not like that—neither so