The fact was that Sophia's behaviour changed after forty-eight hours.
The Rutland Hotel was very good.
It was so good as to disturb Sophia's profound beliefs that there was in the world only one truly high-class pension, and that nobody could teach the creator of that unique pension anything about the art of management.
The food was excellent; the attendance in the bedrooms was excellent (and Sophia knew how difficult of attainment was excellent bedroom attendance); and to the eye the interior of the Rutland presented a spectacle far richer than the Pension Frensham could show.
The standard of comfort was higher.
The guests had a more distinguished appearance.
It is true that the prices were much higher.
Sophia was humbled.
She had enough sense to adjust her perspective.
Further, she found herself ignorant of many matters which by the other guests were taken for granted and used as a basis for conversation.
Prolonged residence in Paris would not justify this ignorance; it seemed rather to intensify its strangeness.
Thus, when someone of cosmopolitan experience, having learnt that she had lived in Paris for many years, asked what had been going on lately at the Comedie Francaise, she had to admit that she had not been in a French theatre for nearly thirty years.
And when, on a Sunday, the same person questioned her about the English chaplain in Paris, lo! she knew nothing but his name, had never even seen him.
Sophia's life, in its way, had been as narrow as Constance's.
Though her experience of human nature was wide, she had been in a groove as deep as Constance's.
She had been utterly absorbed in doing one single thing.
By tacit agreement she had charge of the expedition.
She paid all the bills.
Constance protested against the expensiveness of the affair several times, but Sophia quietened her by sheer force of individuality.
Constance had one advantage over Sophia.
She knew Buxton and its neighbourhood intimately, and she was therefore in a position to show off the sights and to deal with local peculiarities.
In all other respects Sophia led.
They very soon became acclimatized to the hotel.
They moved easily between Turkey carpets and sculptured ceilings; their eyes grew used to the eternal vision of themselves and other slow-moving dignities in gilt mirrors, to the heaviness of great oil-paintings of picturesque scenery, to the indications of surreptitious dirt behind massive furniture, to the grey-brown of the shirt-fronts of the waiters, to the litter of trays, boots and pails in long corridors; their ears were always awake to the sounds of gongs and bells.
They consulted the barometer and ordered the daily carriage with the perfunctoriness of habit.
They discovered what can be learnt of other people's needlework in a hotel on a wet day.
They performed co-operative outings with fellow-guests.
They invited fellow-guests into their sitting-room.
When there was an entertainment they did not avoid it.
Sophia was determined to do everything that could with propriety be done, partly as an outlet for her own energy (which since she left Paris had been accumulating), but more on Constance's account.
She remembered all that Dr. Stirling had said, and the heartiness of her own agreement with his opinions.
It was a great day when, under tuition of an aged lady and in the privacy of their parlour, they both began to study the elements of Patience.
Neither had ever played at cards.
Constance was almost afraid to touch cards, as though in the very cardboard there had been something unrighteous and perilous.
But the respectability of a luxurious private hotel makes proper every act that passes within its walls.
And Constance plausibly argued that no harm could come from a game which you played by yourself.
She acquired with some aptitude several varieties of Patience.
She said:
"I think I could enjoy that, if I kept at it.
But it does make my head whirl."
Nevertheless Constance was not happy in the hotel.
She worried the whole time about her empty house.
She anticipated difficulties and even disasters.
She wondered again and again whether she could trust the second Maggie in her house alone, whether it would not be better to return home earlier and participate personally in the cleaning.
She would have decided to do so had it not been that she hesitated to subject Sophia to the inconvenience of a house upside down.
The matter was on her mind, always.
Always she was restlessly anticipating the day when they would leave.
She had carelessly left her heart behind in St. Luke's Square.
She had never stayed in a hotel before, and she did not like it.
Sciatica occasionally harassed her.