“O don’t talk in that tone!” said Elizabeth.  “I had rather you would not talk at all.  You have chosen an unhappy subject.  It takes a good deal to make me like anybody much, father.”

“What does Rose want?”

“As near as possible, everything,” said Elizabeth, —­ “if you will have the answer.”

“What?”

“Why father, she has nothing in the world but a very pretty face.”

“You grant her that,” said Mr. Haye.

“Yes, I grant her that, though it is a great while since I saw it pretty.  Father, I care nothing at all for any face which has nothing beneath the outside.  It’s a barren prospect to me, however fair the outside may be —­ I don’t care to let my eye dwell on it.”

“How do you like the prospect of your own, in the glass?”

“I should be very sorry if I didn’t think it had infinitely more in it than the face we have been speaking of.  It is not so beautifully tinted, nor so regularly cut; but I like it better.”

“I am afraid few people will agree with you,” said her father dryly.

“There’s one thing,” said Elizabeth, —­ “I sha’n’t know it if they don’t.  But then I see my face at a disadvantage, looking stupidly at itself in the glass —­ I hope it does better to other people.”

“I didn’t know you thought quite so much of yourself,” said Mr. Haye.

“I haven’t told you the half,” said Elizabeth, looking at him.  “I am afraid I think more of myself than anybody else does, or ever will.”

“If you do it so well for yourself, I’m afraid other people won’t save you the trouble,” said her father.

“I’m afraid you will not, by the tone in which you speak, father.”

“What has set you against Rose?”

“Nothing in the world!  I am not set against her.  Nothing in the world but her own emptiness and impossibility of being anything like a companion to me.”

“Elizabeth! —­”

“Father! —­ What’s the matter?”

“How dare you talk in that manner?”

“Why father,” said Elizabeth, her tone somewhat quieting as his was roused, —­ “I never saw the thing yet I didn’t dare say, if I thought it.  Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because it is not true —­ a word of it.”

“I’m sure I wish it wasn’t true,” said Elizabeth.  “What I said was true.  It’s a sorrowful truth to me, too, for I haven’t a soul to talk to that can understand me —­ not even you, father, it seems.”

“I wish I didn’t understand you,” said Mr. Haye.

“It’s nothing very dreadful to understand,” said Elizabeth, —­ “what I have been saying now.  I wonder how you can think so much of it.  I know you love Rose better than I do.”

“I love her so well —­” said Mr. Haye, and stopped.

“So well that what?”

“That I can hardly talk to you with temper.”

“Then don’t let us talk about it at all,” said Elizabeth, whose own heightened colour shewed that her temper was moving.