’I believe she has all the love he has to spare; he is proud of her, and dresses her up, and has endless portraits of her.  Luckily she keeps her beauty.  She is more refined, and has more expression; one could sometimes cry to watch her, and he likes to have her with him, and to discourse to her, but without the slightest perception or consideration of what she would prefer, and with no notion of sacrificing anything for her or the children.  I know she is afraid of him; I have seen her tremble if there were any chance of his being annoyed; and she would not object to any plan of his if it were to cost her life.  I believe it would be misery to her, but I think she would resist—­ay, she did resist, and in vain, for the sake of her child.’

‘Does her affection hold out, do you think?’

’Oh, yes, the spaniel and walnut-tree love, which is in us all, and doubly in the very woman.  It is very beautiful.  She is so proud of him and of her gilded slavery, and so unconsciously submissive and patient; but it is a harder life, I guess, than we can see.  I am sure it must be, for every bit of personal vanity and levity is worn out of her; she only goes out to satisfy him; dresses to please his eye, and talks, with her eye seeking round for him, in dread of being rebuked for mistakes or bad French.  And for the rest, her joy is to be left in peace with little Algernon upon her lap.  Yes, I hope living in all womanly virtues may be training and compensation, but the saddest part of the affair is that he does not think it fashionable to be religious, and she has not moral courage to make open resistance.’

‘May it come,’ fervently.

’It is strange, how much more real and good a creature she is now, than when at home in the midst of all external observances.  Yet it cannot be right! she surely ought to make more stand, but it is too, too literally being afraid to say her soul is her own, for she is unhappy.  She does the utmost she can without offending him, and feels it as she never did before.’

‘There is no judging,’ said Maurice, as his sister looked at him with eyes full of sorrowful yearning.  ’No one can tell where are the boundaries of the two duties.  Poor girl! she has put herself into a state of temptation and trial; but she may be shielded by her exercise of so much that is simply good, and her womanly qualities may become not idolatry, but a training in reaching higher.’

‘May it be so, indeed!’ said Albinia.  ’Oh, Maurice! how I once disdained being told I was too young, and how true it was!  What visions I had about those three, and what failures have resulted!’

’Your visions may have vanished, but you did your work faithfully, and it has not been fruitless.’

’Ay, in shipwrecked lives.  Mischiefs wherever I meant to do best!  Why, I let even my own Maurice grow unmanageable while I was nursing poor grandmamma.  The voluntary duty choked the natural one, and yet—­’