Margaret understood this better than her aunt, and knew that she had
consulted her about going to see the Dryfooses out of deference, and with
no expectation of luminous instruction. She was used to being a law to
herself, but she knew what she might and might not do, so that she was
rather a by-law. She was the kind of girl that might have fancies for
artists and poets, but might end by marrying a prosperous broker, and
leavening a vast lump of moneyed and fashionable life with her culture,
generosity, and good-will. The intellectual interests were first with
her, but she might be equal to sacrificing them; she had the best heart,
but she might know how to harden it; if she was eccentric, her social
orbit was defined; comets themselves traverse space on fixed lines. She
was like every one else, a congeries of contradictions and
inconsistencies, but obedient to the general expectation of what a girl
of her position must and must not finally be. Provisionally, she was very
much what she liked to be.
VII
Margaret Vance tried to give herself some reason for going to call upon
the Dryfooses, but she could find none better than the wish to do a kind
thing. This seemed queerer and less and less sufficient as she examined
it, and she even admitted a little curiosity as a harmless element in her
motive, without being very well satisfied with it.
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