She had accepted Sally’s invitation with great pleasure and her family’s full consent, and was much looking forward to the visit, partly because she would thus avoid seeing her parents for a whole month, but chiefly because she was devoted to Walter and Sally, and rather in love with Albert. Jane was a very ordinary sort of girl, but her character, as is so often the case with women, manifested itself by a series of contradictions and was understood by nobody. Thought by some to be exceptionally stupid, and by others brilliantly clever, she was in reality neither. She had certain talents which she was far too lazy to develop, and a sort of feminine astuteness that prevented her from saying silly things. Like many women she had taste without much intellect, her brain was like a mirror, reflecting the thoughts and ideas of her more intelligent friends and the books that she read. Although she was able to perceive originality in others, she was herself completely unoriginal. She had, however, a sense of humour, and except for a certain bitterness with which, for no apparent reason, she regarded her mother and father, the temperament of an angel.
