Читать книгу Deerbrook - Harriet Martineau - Страница 7

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Mrs. Rowland was mortified that the Greys had been beforehand with her in the idea of a cowslip-gathering. From the moment of Matilda’s asking leave to accompany them, she resolved to have such an expedition from her house as her neighbours should not be able to eclipse. Like Lear, she did not yet know what her deed was to be; but it should be the wonder and terror of the place: she would do such things as should strike the strangers with admiration. When she heard an account of it from her little daughter, she found this had been a very poor beginning—a mere walk in the meadows, and home again to tea;—no boiling the kettle in the woods—not even a surprise of early strawberries. She could not call this being forestalled; it could not give the young ladies any idea of a proper country excursion, with four or five carriages, or a boat with an awning. As soon as Mr. Rowland came home in the evening, she consulted him about the day, the place, the mode, and the numbers to be invited. Mr. Rowland was so well pleased to find his lady in the mood to be civil to her neighbours, that he started no difficulties, and exerted himself to overcome such as could not be overlooked. All the planning prospered so well, that notes to the Grey family and to the Miss Ibbotsons lay on Mr. Grey’s breakfast-table the next morning, inviting the whole party to dine with Mrs. Rowland in Dingleford woods, that day week—the carriages to be at the door at ten o’clock.

The whole village rang with the preparations for this excursion; and the village was destined to ring with other tidings before it took place. Mrs. Rowland often said that she had the worst luck in the world; and it seemed as if all small events fell out so as to plague her. She had an unusual fertility in such sensible suppositions and reasonable complaints; and her whole diversity of expressions of this kind was called into play about this expedition to Dingleford woods. The hams were actually boiled, and the chicken-pies baked, when clouds began to gather in the sky; and on the appointed morning, pattens clinked in the village street, Miss Young’s umbrella was wet through in the mere transit from the farrier’s gate to the schoolroom; the gravel-walk before Mr. Grey’s house was full of yellow pools, and the gurgling of spouts or drips from the trees was heard on every side. The worst of it was, this rain came after a drought of many weeks, which had perilled the young crops, and almost destroyed the hopes of hay; the ladies and children had been far from sufficiently sorry to hear that some of the poorer wheat lands in the county had been ploughed up, and that there was no calculating what hay would be a ton the next winter. They were now to receive the retribution of their indifference; rain had set in, and the farmers hoped that it might continue for a month. It would not be wise to fix any country excursion for a few weeks to come. Let the young people enjoy any fine afternoon that they might be able to turn to the account of a walk, or a drive, or a sail on the river; but picnic parties must be deferred till settled weather came. There was every hope that the middle of the summer would be fine and seasonable, if the rains came down freely now.

This course of meteorological events involved two great vexations to Mrs. Rowland. One was, that the neighbours, who could pretend to entertain the strangers only in a quiet way at home, took the opportunity of the rainy weather to do so, hoping, as they said, not to interfere with any more agreeable engagements. Mrs. Rowland really never saw anything so dissipated as the Greys; they were out almost every evening when they had not company at home. It was impossible that Sophia’s studies could go on as they ought to do. What with taking a quiet cup of tea with one acquaintance, and being at a merry reading party at another’s, and Mrs. Enderby’s little dance, and dinner at the Levitts’, there were few evenings left; and on those few evenings they were never content to be alone. They were always giving the young men encouragement to go in. Mr. Hope made quite a home house of Mr. Grey’s; and as for Philip, he seemed now to be more at Mr. Grey’s than even at his own mother’s or sister’s. Mrs. Grey ought to remember how bad all this was for a girl of Sophia’s age. It would completely spoil the excursion to Dingleford woods. The young people knew one another so well by this time, that the novelty was all worn off, and they would have nothing left to say to each other. It was provoking that Mr. Rowland had promised that the excursion should take place whenever the weather should be settled enough. It might so fairly have been given up! and now it must be gone on with, when every one was tired of the idea, and the young people must almost be weary of one another, from being always together!

The other vexation was, that there were frequent short intervals of fine weather, which were immediately taken advantage of for a drive, or a walk, or a sail; and it came out one day from the children, who had learned it in the schoolroom, that the Miss Ibbotsons had been in Dingleford woods. There had been no such intention when the party set out; they had not designed to go nearly so far; but they had been tempted on by the beauty of the evening and of the scenery, till they had found it the shortest way to come home through the Dingleford woods. Mrs. Rowland pronounced this abominable; and she was not appeased by hearing that her brother had been the proposer of this mode of return, and the guide of the party. Philip forgot everything, she declared, in his fancy for these girls; it was always his fault that he was carried away by the people he was with: he had got the name of a flirt by it, and a flirt he was; but she had never known him so possessed as he seemed to be by these strangers. She must speak to Mr. Rowland about it; the matter might really become serious; and if he should ever be entrapped into marrying into the Grey connections, among people so decidedly objectionable, it would be a terrible self-reproach to her as long as she lived, that she had not interfered in time. She should speak to Mr. Rowland.

Meanwhile she kept a watchful eye on her brother’s proceedings. She found from the children that their Uncle Philip had fulfilled his promise of going to see the schoolroom, and had been so much better than his word, that he had been there very often. When he went, it was always when the Miss Ibbotsons were there, learning German, or drawing, or talking with Miss Young. It was impossible to pick a quarrel with Miss Young about this; for she always sent her visitors away the moment the clock struck the school hour. The summer-house was Mr. Grey’s property, too; so that Mrs. Rowland could only be angry at the studies which went on in it, and had no power to close the doors against any of the parties.

The rainy weather had indeed been very propitious to the study of German. For a fortnight Margaret had spent some hours of each day with Miss Young; and over their books they had learned so much of one another’s heart and mind, that a strong regard had sprung up between them. This new friendship was a great event to Miss Young;—how great, she herself could scarcely have believed beforehand. Her pupils found that Miss Young was now very merry sometimes. Mr. Grey observed to his wife that the warmer weather seemed to agree with the poor young woman, as she had some little colour in her cheeks at last; and Margaret herself observed a change in the tone of the philosophy she had admired from the beginning. There was somewhat less of reasoning in it, and more of impulse; it was as sound as ever, but more genial. While never forgetting the constancy of change in human affairs, she was heartily willing to enjoy the good that befell her, while it lasted. It was well that she could do so; for the good of this new friendship was presently alloyed.

She was not aware, and it was well that she was not, that Hester was jealous of her, almost from the hour of Margaret’s learning what a vast number of irregular verbs there is in the German. Each sister remembered the conversation by the open window, on the night of their arrival at Deerbrook. Remembering it, Margaret made Hester a partaker in all her feelings about Maria Young; her admiration, her pity, her esteem. Reserving to herself any confidence which Maria placed in her (in which, however, no mention of Mr. Enderby ever occurred), she kept not a thought or feeling of her own from her sister. The consequence was, that Hester found that Maria filled a large space in Margaret’s mind, and that a new interest had risen up in which she had little share. She, too, remembered the conversation, but had not strength to act up to the spirit of it. She had then owned her weakness, and called it wickedness, and fancied that she could never mistrust her sister again. She was now so ashamed of her own consciousness of being once more jealous, that she strove to hide the fact from herself; and was not therefore likely to tell it to Margaret. She struggled hourly with herself, rebuking her own temper, and making appeals to her own generosity. She sat drawing in the little blue parlour, morning after morning, during Sophia’s reading or practising, telling herself that Margaret and Miss Young had no secrets, no desire to be always tête-à-tête; that they had properly invited her to learn German; and that she had only to go at any moment, and offer to join them, to be joyfully received. She argued with herself—how mean it would be to do so; to agree to study at last, in order to be a sort of spy upon them, to watch over her own interests; as if Margaret—the most sincere and faithful of living beings—were not to be trusted with them. She had often vowed that she would cure the jealousy of her temper; now was the occasion, and she would meet it; she would steadily sit beside Sophia or Mrs. Grey every morning, when Margaret was not with her, and never let her sister know how selfish she could be.

This was all very well; but it could not make Margaret suppose her sister happy when she was not. She could not be certain what was the matter, but she saw that something was wrong. At times, Hester’s manner was so unboundedly affectionate, that it was impossible to suppose that unkind feelings existed towards herself; though a few pettish words were at other times let drop. Hester’s moods of magnanimity and jealousy were accounted for in other ways by her sister. Margaret believed, after a course of very close observation, that she had discovered, in investigating the cause of Hester’s discomposure, a secret which was unknown to her sister herself. Margaret was not experienced in love, nor in watching the signs of it; but here was the mind she understood best, discomposed without apparent cause—more fond, more generous to herself than ever, yet not reposing its usual confidence in her—and subject to those starts of delight and disappointment which she had heard and could understand to be the moods of love. She was confirmed in her suspicion by observing that the merits of Mr. Hope were becoming daily a less common subject of conversation between them, while it was certain that he had in no degree lost favour with either. They had been charmed with him from the beginning, and had expressed to each other the freest admiration of his truth, his gaiety, his accomplishments, and great superiority to the people amidst whom he lived. He was now spoken of less every day, while his visits grew more frequent, longer, and, Margaret could not but think, more welcome to her sister. The hours when he was sure not to come happened to be those which she spent with Miss Young—the hours in which gentlemen are devoted to their business. Margaret thus witnessed all that passed; and if her conjecture about Hester was right, she could have wished to see Mr. Hope’s manner rather different from what it was. He was evidently strongly attracted to the house; and there was some reason to think that Mrs. Grey believed that Hester was the attraction. But Margaret had no such impression. She saw that Mr. Hope admired her sister’s beauty, listened to her conversation with interest, and was moved at times by the generosity of her tone of moral feeling; but this, though much, was not enough for the anxious sister’s full satisfaction; and the one thing besides which she would fain have discerned she could not perceive. These were early days yet, however; so early that, in the case of any one whom she knew, except her sister, she should have supposed her own conjectures wild and almost improper; but Hester’s was one of those natures to which time and circumstance minister more speedily and more abundantly than to the generality. By the strength of her feelings, and the activity of her affections, time was made more comprehensive, and circumstance more weighty than to others. A day would produce changes in her which the impressions of a week would not effect in less passionate natures; and what were trifling incidents to the minds about her, were great events to her.

Margaret began to consider what was to be done. The more she thought, the more plainly she perceived that there was nothing to be done but to occupy Hester, simply and naturally, with as many interests as possible. This was safe practice, be the cause of her occasional discomposure what it might. It was particularly desirable that she should not continue the habit of sitting in silence for a considerable part of every morning.

One day, just after the voices of the children had been heard in the hall, giving token that school was over, Hester, sitting in the little blue parlour alone, with her head on her hand, was apparently contemplating the drawing on her board, but really considering that Margaret was now beginning to be happy with her friend, and asking why Margaret should not be happy with her friend, when Margaret herself entered.

“Do you want Sophia?” said Hester. “She is up-stairs.”

“No; I want you.”

“Indeed!”

There was an ironical tone of surprise in the one word she spoke, which let fall a weight upon Margaret’s heart;—an old feeling, but one to which she had made no progress towards being reconciled.

“I cannot help you with your German, you know. How can you pretend to want me?”

“It is not about the German at all that I want you. Maria has found a Spenser at last, and I am going to read her the ‘Hymn of Heavenly Beauty,’ I know you never can hear that often enough; so come!”

“Perhaps Miss Young had rather not. I should be sorry to intrude myself upon her. But, however,” continued she, observing Margaret’s look of surprise, “I will come. Do not wait for me, dear. I will come the moment I have put up my drawing.”

Margaret did wait, running over the keys of the open piano meanwhile.

“Shall I call Sophia too?” asked Hester, as she took up her work-bag. “I dare say she never read any of Spenser.”

“I dare say not,” replied Margaret; “and she would not care about it now. If you think we ought, we will call her. If not—”

Hester smiled, nodded, and led the way to the schoolroom without calling Sophia. She had not been two minutes in the cordial presence of her sister and Maria, before she felt the full absurdity of the feelings which had occupied her so lately, and was angry with herself to her own satisfaction. Her companions looked at each other with a smile as they observed at the same moment the downcast attitude of her moistened eyes, the beautiful blush on her cheek, and the expression of meek emotion on her lips. They thought that it was the image of heavenly beauty which moved her thus.

Before they had quite finished the Hymn, the door was burst open, and the children entered, dragging in Mr. Enderby. Mr. Enderby rebuked them, good-naturedly, for introducing him with so little ceremony, and declared to the ladies that Matilda had promised to knock before she opened the door. Hester advised Mary and Fanny to be more quiet in their mode of entrance, observing that they had made Miss Young start with their hurry.

Matilda was glad her uncle remembered to come sometimes. He had promised it several weeks before he came at all; even when he said he was going away in a fortnight.

“And if I had gone away in a fortnight,” said he, “I should not have seen your schoolroom. But this is not the first time I have seen it, as you remember very well. I have been here often lately.”

“But you never attend to me here, uncle! And I want so to show you my desk, where I keep my copy-book, and the work-box you gave me on my birthday.”

“Well, you can show me now, cannot you? So, this is your desk! It seems convenient enough, whatever we may think of its beauty. I suppose it will hold all the knowledge you will want to have put into your head for some time to come. Now show me which is George’s desk, and which Fanny’s; and now Mary’s—a nice row of desks! Now,” whispering to her, “can you show me which is Miss Margaret’s desk?”

The little girl giggled as she answered, that Miss Margaret was too old to be a school-girl.

“So she is: but she learns of Miss Young, and I know she keeps some of her books here. Can you show me where?”

There was a desk rather larger than the rest, the lid of which now happened to be standing open. Matilda slyly pointed to it. While the ladies were engaged with the other children, Mr. Enderby cast a glance into this desk, saw a book which he knew to be Margaret’s, laid something upon it from his pocket, and softly closed the lid; the whole passing, if it was observed at all, as a survey of the children’s desks. He then pretended to look round for the rod.

“No rod!” said he to the laughing children. “Oh, I should like to learn here very much, if there is no rod. Miss Margaret, do you not find it very pleasant learning here?”

The children were shouting, “Miss Young, Miss Young, do let uncle Philip come and learn with us. He says he will be a very good boy—won’t you, uncle Philip? Miss Young, when may uncle Philip come and learn his lessons?”

Margaret saw that there was constraint in the smile with which Maria answered the children. Little as she knew, it struck her that in his fun with the children, Mr. Enderby was relying quite sufficiently on the philosophy he had professed to admire in Miss Young. Mr. Enderby drew a chair to the window round which the ladies were sitting, and took up the volume Margaret had just laid down.

“Go, go, children!” said he; “run away to your gardens! I cannot spare you any more play to-day.”

“Oh, but uncle, we want to ask you a question.”

“Well, ask it.”

“But it is a secret. You must come into the corner with Fanny, and Mary, and me.”

For peace and quiet he went into the corner with them, and they whispered into each ear a question, how many burnt almonds and gingerbread-buttons, and how much barley-sugar, two shillings and threepence halfpenny would buy? The cowslips were now ready to make tea of, and the feast on the dolls’ dishes might be served any day. Mr. Enderby promised to inquire at the confectioner’s, and not to tell anybody else; and at last the children were got rid of.

“Now that we have done with mysteries,” said he, as he resumed his seat by the window, “that is, with children’s mysteries that we can see to the bottom of, let us look a little into the poet’s mysteries. What were you reading? Show me, and I will be your reader. Who or what is this Heavenly Beauty? We have not done with mysteries yet, I see.”

“I was wondering,” said Margaret smiling, “whether you take up Spenser because you are tired of mysteries. In such a case, some other poet might suit you better.”

“What other?”

“Some one less allegorical, at least.”

“I do not know that,” said Hester. “The most cunning allegory that ever was devised is plain and easy in comparison with the simplest true story—fully told: and a man is a poet in proportion as he fully tells a simple true story.”

“A story of the mind, you mean,” said Mr. Enderby, “not of the mere events of life?”

“Of the mind, of course, I mean. Without the mind the mere life is nothing.”

“Is not allegory a very pretty way of telling such a story of the mind, under the appearance of telling a story of a life?”

“Yes,” said Margaret; “and that is the reason why so many like allegory. There is a pleasure in making one’s way about a grotto in a garden; but I think there is a much higher one in exploring a cave on the sea-shore, dim and winding, where you never know that you have come to the end—a much higher pleasure in exploring a life than following out an allegory.”

“You are a true lover of mystery, Miss Margaret. You should have lived a thousand years ago.”

“Thank you: I am very glad I did not. But why so long ago? Are there not mysteries enough left?”

“And will there not be enough a thousand years hence?” said Hester.

“I am afraid not. You and I cannot venture to speak upon what the Germans may be doing. But these two ladies can tell us, perhaps, whether they are not clearing everything up very fast;—making windows in your cave, Miss Margaret, till nobody will be afraid to look into every cranny of it.”

“And then our complaint,” said Miss Young, “will be like Mrs. Howell’s, when somebody told her that we were to have the Drummond light on every church steeple. ‘Oh dear, ma’am!’ said she, ‘we shall not know how in the world to get any darkness.’ ”

“You speak as if you agreed that the Germans really are the makers of windows that Mr. Enderby supposes them,” observed Margaret; “but you do not think we are any nearer the end of mysteries than ever, do you?”

“Oh, no; not till we have struck our stone to the bottom of the universe, and walked round it: and I am not aware that the Germans pretend to be able to do that, any more than other people. Indeed, I think there are as many makers of grottoes as explorers of caves among them. What do you want, my dear?”

This last was addressed to George, whose round face, red with exertion, appeared at a back window. The little girls were hoisting him up, that he might call out once more, “Uncle Philip, be sure you remember not to tell.”

“It would be a pity that mysteries should come to an end,” observed Mr. Enderby, “when they seem to please our human tastes so well. See there, how early the love of mystery begins! and who can tell where it ends? Is there one of your pupils, Miss Young, in whom you do not find it?”

“Not one; but is there not a wide difference between the love of making mysteries, and a taste for finding them out?”

“Do you not find both in children, and up into old age?”

“In children, one usually finds both: but I think the love of mystery-making and surprises goes off as people grow wiser. Fanny and Mary were plotting all last week how to take their sister Sophia by surprise with a piece of India-rubber, a token of fraternal affection, as they were pleased to call it; and you see George has a secret to-day: but they will have fewer hidings and devices every year: and, if they grow really wise, they will find that, amidst the actual business of life, there is so much more safety, and ease, and blessing in perfect frankness than in any kind of concealment, that they will give themselves the liberty and peace of being open as the daylight. Such is my hope for them. But all this need not prevent their delighting in the mysteries which are not of man’s making.”

“They will be all the more at leisure for them,” said Margaret, “from having their minds free from plots and secrets.”

“Surely you are rather hard upon arts and devices,” said Philip. “Without more or fewer of them, we should make our world into a Palace of Truth—see the Veillées du Château, which Matilda is reading with Miss Young. Who ever read it, that did not think the Palace of Truth the most disagreeable place in the world?”

“And why?” asked Margaret. “Not because the people in it spoke truth; but because the truth which they spoke was hatred, and malice, and selfishness.”

“And how much better,” inquired Hester, “is the truth that we should speak, if we were as true as the daylight? I hope we shall always be allowed to make mysteries of our own selfish and unkind fancies. There would be little mutual respect left if these things were told.”

“I think there would be more than ever,” said Margaret, carefully avoiding to meet her sister’s eye. “I think so many mistakes would be explained, so many false impressions set right, on the instant of their being made, that our mutual relations would go on more harmoniously than now.”

“And what would you do with the affairs now dedicated to mystery?” asked Mr. Enderby. “How would you deal with diplomacy, and government, and with courtship? You surely would not overthrow the whole art of wooing? You would not doom lovers’ plots and devices?”

The ladies were all silent. Mr. Enderby, however, was determined to have an answer. He addressed himself particularly to Margaret.

“You do not disapprove of the little hidden tokens with which a man may make his feelings secretly known where he wishes them to be understood;—tokens which may meet the eye of one alone, and carry no meaning to any other! You do not disapprove of a more gentle and mysterious way of saying, ‘I love you,’ than looking full in one another’s face, and declaiming it like a Quaker upon affirmation? You do not disapprove—”

“As for disapproving,” said Margaret, who chanced to perceive that Maria’s hand shook so that she could not guide her needle, and that she was therefore apparently searching for something in her work-box—“as for disapproving, I do not pretend to judge for other people—”

She stopped short, struck with the blunder she had made. Mr. Enderby hastened to take advantage of it. He said, laughing:

“Well, then, speak for yourself. Never mind other people’s case.”

“What I mean,” said Margaret, with grave simplicity, “is, that all depends upon the person whose regard is to be won. There are silly girls, and weak women, who, liking mysteries in other affairs, are best pleased to be wooed with small artifices;—with having their vanity and their curiosity piqued with sly compliments—”

“Sly compliments! What an expression!”

“Such women agree, as a matter of course, in the old notion—suitable enough five centuries ago—that the life of courtship should be as unlike as possible to married life. But I certainly think those much the wisest and the happiest, who look upon the whole affair as the solemn matter that it really is, and who desire to be treated, from the beginning, with the sincerity and seriousness which they will require after they are married.”

“If the same simplicity and seriousness were common in this as are required in other grave transactions,” said Hester, “there would be less of the treachery, delusion, and heart-breaking, which lie heavy upon the souls of many a man and many a woman.”

Mr. Enderby, happening to be looking out of the window here, as if for something to say, caught the eye of his sister, who was walking in her garden. She beckoned to him, but he took no notice, not desiring to be disturbed at present. Turning again to Margaret, he said:

“But you would destroy all the graces of courtship: you would—”

“Nay,” said Hester, “what is so graceful as the simplicity of entire mutual trust?—the more entire the more graceful.”

“I wish you had left out the word ‘trust.’ You have spoiled something that I was going on to say about the simplicity of drawing lots like the Moravians—the most sincere courtship of all: but that word ‘trust’ puts my illustration aside. You need not protest. I assure you I am not so dull as not to understand that you think love necessary to the wooing which seems graceful in your eyes;—Oh, yes: love, and mutual knowledge, and mutual reverence, and perfect trust! Oh, yes, I understand it all.”

“Philip!” cried a soft, sentimental voice under the window:

“Brother, I want your arm for a turn in the shrubbery.”

Mrs. Rowland’s bonnet was visible as she looked up to the window. She saw the braids of the hair of the young ladies, and her voice was rather less soft as she called again, “Philip, do you hear? I want you.”

It was impossible to seem not to hear. Mr. Enderby was obliged to go: but he left his hat behind him, as a sort of pledge that he meant to limit himself to the single turn proposed.

For various reasons, the young ladies were all disinclined to speak after he had left them. Miss Young was the first to move. She rose to go to her desk for something—the desk in which Margaret kept the books she used in this place. Ever on the watch to save Maria the trouble of moving about, which was actual pain to her, Margaret flew to see if she could not fetch what was wanted: but Miss Young was already looking into the desk. Her eye caught the pretty new little volume which lay there. She took it up, found it was a volume of Tieck, and saw on the fly-leaf, in the well-known handwriting, “From PE.” One warm beam of hope shot through her heart:—how could it be otherwise—the book lying in her desk, and thus addressed? But it was only one moment’s joy. The next instant’s reflection, and the sight of Margaret’s German exercise, on which the book had lain, revealed the real case to her. In sickness of heart, she would, upon impulse, have put back the book, and concealed the incident: but she was not sure but that Margaret had seen the volume, and she was sure of what her own duty was. With a smile and a steady voice she held out the book to Margaret, and said:

“Here is something for you, Margaret, which looks a little like one of the hidden, and gentle, and mysterious tokens Mr. Enderby has been talking about. Here it is, lying among your books; and I think it was not with them when you last left your seat.”

Margaret blushed with an emotion which seemed to the one who knew her best to be too strong to be mere surprise. She looked doubtful for a moment about the book being meant for her. Its German aspect was conclusive against its being designed for Hester: but Miss Young—was it certain that the volume was not hers? She asked this; but Maria replied, as her head was bent over her desk:

“There is no doubt about it. I am sure. It is nobody’s but yours.”

Some one proposed to resume the reading. The ‘Hymn to Heavenly Beauty’ was finished, but no remark followed. Each was thinking of something else. More common subjects suited their present mood better. It was urged upon Hester that she should be one of the daily party; and, her lonely fancies being for the hour dispersed, she agreed.

“But,” she observed, “other people’s visits alter the case entirely. I do not see how study is to go on if any one may come in from either house, as Mr. Enderby did to-day. It is depriving Miss Young of her leisure, too, and making use of her apartment in a way that she may well object to.”

“I am here, out of school hours, only upon sufferance,” replied Miss Young. “I never call the room mine without this explanation.”

“Besides,” said Margaret, “it is a mere accident Mr. Enderby’s coming in to-day. If he makes a habit of it, we have only to tell him that we want our time to ourselves.”

Miss Young knew better. She made no reply; but she felt in her inmost soul that her new-born pleasures were, from this moment, to be turned into pains. She knew Mr. Enderby; and knowing him, foresaw that she was to be a witness of his wooings of another, whom she had just begun to take to her heart. This was to be her fate if she was strong enough for it—strong enough to be generous in allowing to Margaret opportunities which could not without her be enjoyed, of fixing the heart of one whom she could not pronounce to have been faulty towards herself. His conversation today had gone far to make her suppose him blameless, and herself alone in fault; so complete had seemed his unconsciousness with regard to her. Her duty then was clearly to give them up to each other, with such spirit of self-sacrifice as she might be capable of. If not strong enough for this, the alternative was a daily painful retreat to her lodging, whence she might look out on the heaps of cinders in the farrier’s yard, her spirit abased the while with the experience of her own weakness. Neither alternative was very cheering.