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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: Madame Munster; and the Baroness followed her to Mrs. Acton's apartment.
Eugenia reflected, as she went, that it was not the affectation
of impertinence that made her dislike this young lady, for on
that ground she could easily have beaten her. It was not an
aspiration on the girl's part to rivalry, but a kind of laughing,
childishly-mocking indifference to the results of comparison.
Mrs. Acton was an emaciated, sweet-faced woman of five and fifty,
sitting with pillows behind her, and looking out on a clump
of hemlocks. She was very modest, very timid, and very ill;
she made Eugenia feel grateful that she herself was not like that--
neither so ill, nor, possibly, so modest. On a chair, beside her,
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