And then day by day Rachel had discovered that great ladies are, after
all, human creatures, strangely resembling other human creatures. And
Mrs. Maldon slowly became for her an old woman of seventy-two,
with unquestionably wondrous hair, but failing in strength and in
faculties; and it grew merely pathetic to Rachel that Mrs. Maldon
should force herself always to sit straight upright. As for Mrs.
Maldon's charitableness, Rachel could not deny that she refused to
think evil, and yet it was plain that at bottom Mrs. Maldon was not
much deceived about people: in which apparent inconsistency there hid
a slight disturbing suggestion of falseness that mysteriously fretted
the downright Rachel.
Again, beneath Mrs. Maldon's modesty concerning the merits of her
sitting-room Rachael soon fancied that she could detect traces of an
ingenuous and possibly senile "house-pride," which did more than fret
the lady companion; it faintly offended her. That one should be proud
of a possession or of an achievement was admissible, but that one
should fail to conceal the pride absolutely was to Rachel, with her
Five Towns character, a sign of weakness, a sign of the soft South.
Lastly, Mrs. Maldon had, it transpired, her "ways"; for example, in
the matter of blinds and in the matter of tapers.
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