"
"Never!" I exclaimed--reading my fancied doom in the startling fact;
for I conceived it impossible, had she ever really loved me, that the
matter should not have come up in conversation between two so closely
united--"Never! What, no girlish--no childish preference--have you
never had no mutual preferences to reveal?"
"Never"--answered Grace, firmly, though her very temples seemed
illuminated--"Never. We have been satisfied with each other's
affection, and have had no occasion to enter into any unfeminine and
improper secrets, if any such existed."
A long, and I doubt not a mutually painful pause succeeded.
"Grace," said I, at length--"I am not envious of this probable
accession of fortune to the Hardinges, but I think we should all have
been much more united--much happier--without it."
My sister's colour left her face, she trembled all over, and she
became pale as death.
"You may be right, in some respects, Miles," she answered, after a
time. "And, yet, it is hardly generous to think so. Why should we wish
to see our oldest friends; those who are so very dear to us, our
excellent guardian's children, less well off than we are ourselves?
No doubt, no doubt, it may seem better to _us_, that Clawbonny
should be the castle and we its possessors; but others have their
rights and interests as well as ourselves.
Pages:
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624