this meeting had dominated the afternoon's conversation. It was, she now quite fully realized, the paramount plan in Gareth's mind. Lennie was certain that this new association, if it developed, and she could see no reason to believe that it would not develop even supposing she withdrew her proffer to arrange an introduction, would glow with a glamour that her own relationship with Gareth had fatally lacked. The Countess could give him everything that the school-teacher had been unable to give him. She could offer him the experiences of her life in the great world; she could draw on an effulgent background for the materials of her interest. Lennie Colman faced the truth, took stock, and knew that she was jealous.
The school-teacher looked around her, dissected the elements of her environment as she had never dissected them before. She saw the room she was living in, the room she had lived in for so many years, in all its sordid commonplaceness. She saw the faded pink walls, from which in spots the paper was peeling, exposing the grey plaster. She saw the pathos of the Copley prints, the Countess Potocka and The Pot of Basil, neatly passe-partouted. She saw the ugliness, the vicious poverty, of the threadbare, ingrain carpet, the cheap, cherry, machine-carved bed, the dresser, with a hand-towel serving as a cover, on which were laid out her celluloid comb, her brush with a blue celluloid back, the blue celluloid box for hair which came out in the
