“Yes! I will keep these—this
ring and bracelet,” said Dorothea. Then,
letting her hand fall on the table, she said in another
tone—“Yet what miserable men find
such things, and work at them, and sell them!”
She paused again, and Celia thought that her sister
was going to renounce the ornaments, as in consistency
she ought to do.
“Yes, dear, I will keep these,” said Dorothea,
decidedly. “But take all the rest away,
and the casket.”
She took up her pencil without removing the jewels,
and still looking at them. She thought of often
having them by her, to feed her eye at these little
fountains of pure color.
“Shall you wear them in company?” said
Celia, who was watching her with real curiosity as
to what she would do.
Dorothea glanced quickly at her sister. Across
all her imaginative adornment of those whom she loved,
there darted now and then a keen discernment, which
was not without a scorching quality. If Miss
Brooke ever attained perfect meekness, it would not
be for lack of inward fire.
“Perhaps,” she said, rather haughtily.
“I cannot tell to what level I may sink.”
Celia blushed, and was unhappy: she saw that
she had offended her sister, and dared not say even
anything pretty about the gift of the ornaments which
she put back into the box and carried away. Dorothea
too was unhappy, as she went on with her plan-drawing,
questioning the purity of her own feeling and speech
in the scene which had ended with that little explosion.
Celia’s consciousness told her that she had
not been at all in the wrong: it was quite natural
and justifiable that she should have asked that question,
and she repeated to herself that Dorothea was inconsistent:
either she should have taken her full share of the
jewels, or, after what she had said, she should have
renounced them altogether.
“I am sure—at least, I trust,”
thought Celia, “that the wearing of a necklace
will not interfere with my prayers. And I do
not see that I should be bound by Dorothea’s
opinions now we are going into society, though of
course she herself ought to be bound by them.
But Dorothea is not always consistent.”
Thus Celia, mutely bending over her tapestry, until
she heard her sister calling her.
“Here, Kitty, come and look at my plan; I shall
think I am a great architect, if I have not got incompatible
stairs and fireplaces.”
As Celia bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek
against her sister’s arm caressingly.
Celia understood the action. Dorothea saw that
she had been in the wrong, and Celia pardoned her.
Since they could remember, there had been a mixture
of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia’s
mind towards her elder sister. The younger had
always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked creature
without its private opinions?
