One means of torture, unconsciously devised by Aunt Victoria, tried Beth extremely. Aunt Victoria used to send her to church alone on Sunday afternoons to hear a certain eloquent preacher, and required her to repeat the text, and tell her what the whole sermon was about on her return. Beth did her best, but if she managed to remember the text by repeating it all the time, she could not attend to the sermon, and if she attended to the sermon, she invariably forgot the text. It was another instance of the trickishness of her memory; she could have remembered both the text and sermon without an effort had she not been afraid of forgetting them.
But the thing that gave her aunt most trouble of mind was Beth's habit of making acquaintance with all kinds of people. It was vain to warn her, and worse than vain, for the reasons Aunt Victoria gave her for not knowing people only excited her interest in them, and she would wait about, watching, to see for herself, studying their habits with the patient pertinacity of a naturalist. The drawing-room floor was let to a lady whose husband was at sea, a Mrs. Crome. She was very intimate with a gentleman who also lodged in the house, a friend of her husband's, she said, who had promised to look after her during his absence. Their bedrooms adjoined, and Beth used to see their boots outside their doors every morning when she went down to breakfast, and wonder why they got up so late.
"Out again together nearly all last night," Prentice remarked to Aunt Victoria one morning; and then they shook their heads, but agreed that there was nothing to be done. From this and other remarks, however, Beth gathered that Mrs. Crome was going to perdition; and from that time she had a horrid fascination for Beth, who would gaze at her whenever she had an opportunity, with great solemn eyes dilated, as if she were learning her by heart--as, indeed, she was--involuntarily, for future reference; for Mrs. Crome was one of a pronounced type, as Beth learnt eventually, when she knew the world better, an example which helped her to recognise other specimens of the kind whenever she met them.
She scraped acquaintance with Mrs. Crome on the stairs, at last, and was surprised to find her as kind as could be, and was inclined to argue from this that Prentice and Aunt Victoria must be mistaken about her. But one evening Mrs. Crome tempted her into the drawing-room. The gentleman was there, smoking a cigar and drinking whisky-and-water; and there was something in the whole aspect and atmosphere of the room that made Beth feel exceedingly uncomfortable, and wish she was out of it immediately.