Thoughts came to her, as she asked herself that question, which have startled and saddened us all.

Does there exist in every human being, beneath that outward and visible character which is shaped into form by the social influences surrounding us, an inward, invisible disposition, which is part of ourselves, which education may indirectly modify, but can never hope to change?  Is the philosophy which denies this and asserts that we are born with dispositions like blank sheets of paper a philosophy which has failed to remark that we are not born with blank faces—­a philosophy which has never compared together two infants of a few days old, and has never observed that those infants are not born with blank tempers for mothers and nurses to fill up at will?  Are there, infinitely varying with each individual, inbred forces of Good and Evil in all of us, deep down below the reach of mortal encouragement and mortal repression—­hidden Good and hidden Evil, both alike at the mercy of the liberating opportunity and the sufficient temptation?  Within these earthly limits, is earthly Circumstance ever the key; and can no human vigilance warn us beforehand of the forces imprisoned in ourselves which that key may unlock?

For the first time, thoughts such as these rose darkly—­as shadowy and terrible possibilities—­in Miss Garth’s mind.  For the first time, she associated those possibilities with the past conduct and characters, with the future lives and fortunes of the orphan sisters.

Searching, as in a glass darkly, into the two natures, she felt her way, doubt by doubt, from one possible truth to another.  It might be that the upper surface of their characters was all that she had, thus far, plainly seen in Norah and Magdalen.  It might be that the unalluring secrecy and reserve of one sister, the all-attractive openness and high spirits of the other, were more or less referable, in each case, to those physical causes which work toward the production of moral results.  It might be, that under the surface so formed—­a surface which there had been nothing, hitherto, in the happy, prosperous, uneventful lives of the sisters to disturb—­forces of inborn and inbred disposition had remained concealed, which the shock of the first serious calamity in their lives had now thrown up into view.  Was this so?  Was the promise of the future shining with prophetic light through the surface-shadow of Norah’s reserve, and darkening with prophetic gloom, under the surface-glitter of Magdalen’s bright spirits?  If the life of the elder sister was destined henceforth to be the ripening ground of the undeveloped Good that was in her-was the life of the younger doomed to be the battle-field of mortal conflict with the roused forces of Evil in herself?