Shirley

entirely to my care – if it were quite dependent on me.«
    »You
feel!
Yes! yes! I daresay, now: you are led a great deal by your
feelings,
and you think yourself a very sensitive, refined personage, no doubt. Are you aware that, with all these romantic ideas, you have managed to train your features into an habitually lackadaisical expression, better suited to a novel-heroine than to a woman who is to make her way in the real world, by dint of common sense?«
    »No; I am not at all aware of that, Mrs. Yorke.«
    »Look in the glass just behind you. Compare the face you see there with that of any early-rising, hard-working milkmaid.«
    »My face is a pale one, but it is
not
sentimental, and most milkmaids, however red and robust they may be, are more stupid and less practically fitted to make their way in the world than I am. I think more and more correctly than milkmaids in general do; consequently, where they would often, for want of reflection, act weakly, I, by dint of reflection, should act judiciously.«
    »Oh, no! you would be influenced by your feelings. You would be guided by impulse.«
    »Of course, I should often be influenced by my feelings: they were given me to that end. Whom my feelings teach me to love, I
must
and
shall
love; and I hope, if ever I have a husband and children, my feelings will induce me to love them. I hope, in that case, all my impulses will be strong in compelling me to love.«
    Caroline had a pleasure in saying this with emphasis: she had a pleasure in daring to say it in Mrs. Yorke's presence. She did not care what unjust sarcasm might be hurled at her in reply: she flushed, not with anger, but excitement, when the ungenial matron answered, coolly, –
    »Do n't waste your dramatic effects. That was well said, – it was quite fine; but it is lost on two women – an old wife and an old maid: there should have been a disengaged gentleman present. Is Mr. Robert nowhere hid behind the curtains, do you think, Miss Moore?«
    Hortense, who during the chief part of the conversation had been in the kitchen superintending the preparations for tea, did not yet quite comprehend the drift of the discourse. She answered, with a puzzled air, that Robert was at Whinbury. Mrs. Yorke laughed her own peculiar short laugh.
    »Straightforward Miss Moore!« said she, patronizingly. »It is like you to understand my question so literally, and answer it so simply.
Your
mind comprehends nothing of intrigue. Strange things might go on around you without your being the wiser: you are not of the class the world calls sharp-witted.«
    These equivocal compliments did not seem to please Hortense. She drew herself up, puckered her black eyebrows, but still looked puzzled.
    »I have ever been noted for sagacity and discernment from childhood,« she returned: for, indeed, on the possession of these qualities, she peculiarly piqued herself.
    »You never plotted to win a husband, I'll be bound,« pursued Mrs. Yorke; »and you have not the benefit of previous experience to aid you in discovering when others plot.«
    Caroline felt this kind language where the benevolent speaker intended she should feel it – in her very heart. She could not even parry the shafts: she was defenceless for the present: to answer would have been to avow that the cap fitted. Mrs. Yorke, looking at her as she sat with troubled downcast eyes, and cheek burning painfully, and figure expressing in its bent attitude and unconscious tremor all the humiliation and chagrin she experienced, felt the sufferer was fair game. The strange woman had a natural antipathy to a shrinking, sensitive character – a nervous temperament: nor was a pretty, delicate, and youthful face a passport to her affections. It was seldom she met with all these obnoxious qualities combined in one individual: still more seldom she found that individual at her mercy, under circumstances in which she could crush her well. She happened, this afternoon, to be specially bilious and morose: as much disposed to gore as any vicious ›mother of the herd:‹ lowering her large head, she made a new charge.
    »Your cousin Hortense is an excellent sister, Miss Helstone: such ladies as come to try their life's luck here, at Hollow's cottage, may, by a very little clever female artifice, cajole the mistress of the house, and have the game all in their own hands. You are fond of your cousin's society, I dare say, Miss?«
    »Of which cousin's?«
    »Oh, of the lady's,
of