Her father was a Derbyshire Baronet of the old school, she was a woman of the new school, full of intellectuality, and heavy, nerve-worn with consciousness.
She was passionately interested in reform, her soul was given up to the public cause.
But she was a man's woman, it was the manly world that held her.
She had various intimacies of mind and soul with various men of capacity.
Ursula knew, among these men, only Rupert Birkin, who was one of the school-inspectors of the county.
But Gudrun had met others, in London.
Moving with her artist friends in different kinds of society, Gudrun had already come to know a good many people of repute and standing.
She had met Hermione twice, but they did not take to each other.
It would be queer to meet again down here in the Midlands, where their social standing was so diverse, after they had known each other on terms of equality in the houses of sundry acquaintances in town.
For Gudrun had been a social success, and had her friends among the slack aristocracy that keeps touch with the arts.
Hermione knew herself to be well-dressed; she knew herself to be the social equal, if not far the superior, of anyone she was likely to meet in Willey Green.
She knew she was accepted in the world of culture and of intellect.
She was a KULTURTRAGER, a medium for the culture of ideas.
With all that was highest, whether in society or in thought or in public action, or even in art, she was at one, she moved among the foremost, at home with them.
No one could put her down, no one could make mock of her, because she stood among the first, and those that were against her were below her, either in rank, or in wealth, or in high association of thought and progress and understanding.
So, she was invulnerable.
All her life, she had sought to make herself invulnerable, unassailable, beyond reach of the world's judgment.
And yet her soul was tortured, exposed.
Even walking up the path to the church, confident as she was that in every respect she stood beyond all vulgar judgment, knowing perfectly that her appearance was complete and perfect, according to the first standards, yet she suffered a torture, under her confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to wounds and to mockery and to despite.
She always felt vulnerable, vulnerable, there was always a secret chink in her armour.
She did not know herself what it was.
It was a lack of robust self, she had no natural sufficiency, there was a terrible void, a lack, a deficiency of being within her.
And she wanted someone to close up this deficiency, to close it up for ever.
She craved for Rupert Birkin.
When he was there, she felt complete, she was sufficient, whole.
For the rest of time she was established on the sand, built over a chasm, and, in spite of all her vanity and securities, any common maid-servant of positive, robust temper could fling her down this bottomless pit of insufficiency, by the slightest movement of jeering or contempt.
And all the while the pensive, tortured woman piled up her own defences of aesthetic knowledge, and culture, and world-visions, and disinterestedness.
Yet she could never stop up the terrible gap of insufficiency.
If only Birkin would form a close and abiding connection with her, she would be safe during this fretful voyage of life.
He could make her sound and triumphant, triumphant over the very angels of heaven.
If only he would do it!
But she was tortured with fear, with misgiving.
She made herself beautiful, she strove so hard to come to that degree of beauty and advantage, when he should be convinced.
But always there was a deficiency.
He was perverse too.
He fought her off, he always fought her off.
The more she strove to bring him to her, the more he battled her back.
And they had been lovers now, for years.
Oh, it was so wearying, so aching; she was so tired. But still she believed in herself.
She knew he was trying to leave her.
She knew he was trying to break away from her finally, to be free.
But still she believed in her strength to keep him, she believed in her own higher knowledge.
His own knowledge was high, she was the central touchstone of truth.
She only needed his conjunction with her.
And this, this conjunction with her, which was his highest fulfilment also, with the perverseness of a wilful child he wanted to deny.
With the wilfulness of an obstinate child, he wanted to break the holy connection that was between them.
He would be at this wedding; he was to be groom's man.
He would be in the church, waiting.
He would know when she came.
She shuddered with nervous apprehension and desire as she went through the church-door.