“Father’s sun rises and sets in Harry, and it was like him to speak that way; he meant nothing against us.  Father would always do right.  What I feel most is the refusal to give us our own apartments in Seat-Sandal.  We do not want to live here all the time, but we ought to be able to feel that we have a certain home here.”

“Yes, indeed.  It is very important in my eyes to keep a footing in the house.  Possession is a kind of right.  But never mind, Sophia.  I have always had an impression that this was my home.  The first moment I crossed the threshold I felt it.  All its rooms were familiar to me.  People do not have such presentiments for nothing.”

There is a class of lovers who find their supremest pleasure in isolating themselves; who consider their own affairs an oasis of delight, and make it desert all around them.  Julius and Sophia belonged to it.  They really enjoyed the idea that they were being badly used.  They talked over the squire’s injustice, Mrs. Sandal’s indifference to every one but Harry, and Charlotte’s envy, until they had persuaded themselves that they were the only respectable and intelligent members of the family.  Naturally Sophia’s nature deteriorated under this isolating process.  She grew secretive and suspicious.  Her love-affairs assumed a proportion which put her in false relations to all the rest of the world.

It was unfortunate that they had come to a crisis during Harry’s visit, for of course Harry occupied a large share of every one’s interest.  The squire took the opportunity to talk over the affairs of the estate with him, and this was not a kind of conversation they felt inclined to make general.  It took them long solitary walks to the different “folds,” and several times as far as Kendal together.  “Am I one of the family, or am I not?” Julius would ask Sophia on such occasions; and then the discussion of this question separated them from it, sometimes for hours at a time.

Mrs. Sandal hardly perceived the growth of this domestic antagonism.  When Harry was at Seat-Sandal, she lived and moved and had her being in Harry.  His food and drink, and the multitude of his small comforts; his friends and amusements; the renovation of his linen and hosiery; his hopes and fears, and his promotion or marriage, were enough to fill the mother’s heart.  She was by no means oblivious of Sophia’s new interests, she only thought that they could be put aside until Harry’s short visit was over; and Charlotte’s sympathies were also with Harry.  “Julius and Sophia do not want them, mother,” she said, “they are sufficient unto themselves.  If I enter a room pre-occupied by them, Sophia sits silent over her work, with a look of injury on her face; and Julius walks about, and kicks the stools out of his way, and simply ‘looks’ me out of their presence.”