Hester made many discoveries
about herself during the first months of her life at Warpington, and the
first of the series amazed her more than any of the later ones.
She discovered that she was proud. Perhaps she had not the enormous
opinion of herself which Mrs. Gresley so frequently deplored, for
Hester's thoughts seldom dwelt upon herself. But the altered
circumstances of her life forced them momentarily upon herself
nevertheless, as a burst pipe will spread its waters down a damask
curtain.
So far, during the eight years since she had left the school-room, she
had always been "Miss Gresley," a little personage treated with
consideration wherever she went, and _choyee_ for her delicate humor and
talent for conversation. She now experienced the interesting sensation,
as novel to her as it is familiar to most of us, of being nobody, and
she disliked it. The manners of the set in which she found herself also
grated continually on her fastidious taste. She was first amazed and
then indignant at hearing her old Middleshire friends, whose simplicity
far surpassed that of her new acquaintance, denounced by the
latter--without being acquainted with them except officially--as "fine,"
as caring only for "London people," and as being "tuft-hunters," because
they frequently entertained at their houses persons of rank, to half of
whom they were related.
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