Rachel had had the palm of cleverness conceded to her ever since she
could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister
at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and
excelled in, the studies that were a toil to Grace. Subsequently, while
Grace had contented herself with the ordinary course of unambitious
feminine life, Rachel had thrown herself into the process of
self-education with all her natural energy, and carried on her favourite
studies by every means within her reach, until she considerably
surpassed in acquirements and reflection all the persons with whom she
came in frequent contact. It was a homely neighbourhood, a society well
born, but of circumscribed interests and habits, and little connected
with the great progressive world, where, however, Rachel's sympathies
all lay, necessarily fed, however, by periodical literature, instead of
by conversation or commerce with living minds.
She began by being stranded on the ignorance of those who surrounded
her, and found herself isolated as a sort of pedant; and as time went
on, the narrowness of interests chafed her, and in like manner left
her alone. As she grew past girlhood, the cui bono question had come to
interfere with her ardour in study for its own sake, and she felt the
influence of an age eminently practical and sifting, but with small
powers of acting. The quiet Lady Bountiful duties that had sufficed her
mother and sister were too small and easy to satisfy a soul burning at
the report of the great cry going up to heaven from a world of sin and
woe. The examples of successful workers stimulated her longings to be up
and doing, and yet the ever difficult question between charitable works
and filial deference necessarily detained her, and perhaps all the more
because it was not so much the fear of her mother's authority as of her
horror and despair, that withheld her from the decisive and eccentric
steps that she was always feeling impelled to take. Gentle Mrs. Curtis
had never been a visible power in her house, and it was through their
desire to avoid paining her that her government had been exercised over
her two daughters ever since their father's death, which had taken place
in Grace's seventeenth year. Both she and Grace implicitly accepted
Rachel's superiority as an unquestionable fact, and the mother, when
traversing any of her clever daughter's schemes, never disputed either
her opinions or principles, only entreated that these particular
developments might be conceded to her own weakness; and Rachel generally
did concede. She could not act; but she could talk uncontradicted, and
she hated herself for the enforced submission to a state of things that
she despised.