Charlotte M. Yonge

“ It is not as people in books love, and—and it can't be as your Agnes must love Mr. Arundel."
A most emphatic "O no!" escaped from Marian, she hardly knew how, as if it was profanation to compare Mr. Faulkner to Edmund; and perhaps the strongest proof that Caroline's was not a real attachment, was that she let it pass. "But then," pursued she warmly, "I am sure he is attached to me—yes, very much—and—well, and I am glad to see him come into the room; I like to walk with him. There is no one—no—no one in the whole world whom I like so well. ”

“ Marian would have been still more provoked with Clara, had Agnes not had forbearance enough to abstain from telling her all that Clara had said, when once, by some chance, left alone with her for ten minutes. After a great deal about her extreme friendship for "dearest Marian," she said, "Some people think her pretty,—do you, Miss Wortley?"
"Not exactly pretty," said Agnes, "but hers is a fine face."
"Ah! she has not colour enough to be pretty. She is much too pale, poor dear, but some people say that is aristocratic. And she is like her cousin, Lady Marchmont, the beauty. ”

“ Marian, I am sure nothing could hurt your faith."
"I would not try," said Marian, shaking her head sadly.
"But at that rate no one ever would be converted?"
"You forget that there are clergymen."
"Yes, but other people have done good."
"O yes, but not women by arguing. O no, no, Caroline, we never ought to put our weakness forward, as if it could guard the truth. You know the wrong side may find stronger arguments than we are able to do—mind I don't say than can be found—of course truth is the strongest of all, but we may be overpowered, though the truth is not. ”

“ He care for his friend!" said Mr. Lyddell scornfully. "'Tis for himself he is a partizan, I tell you. Nothing else does he care a straw for. 'Tis for nothing but the saving of her fortune that he would have me persecute his sister into this marriage! Aye! he has the face to tell me so! and what more do you think he comes and says to me! Why! that Lionel will be nothing but a burthen for ever! A pretty pass things are come to when he speaks after that fashion of his own brother! He cared for his friend, indeed!"
"No one ever thought of compelling Caroline," pleaded Mrs. Lyddell. ”

“ Selina Marchmont has failed too in giving her the exclusive spirit which I once feared for her. It is as if she had a spell for passing through the world unscathed."
"And you think she is happy?"
"As happy as those that never look for their happiness in this world."
Agnes sighed. "My vision has always been," said she, "to see Marian as happy as—ourselves."
"She may be yet," said Edmund smiling, "but she has the best sort of happiness. She is in less danger of clinging to this world than we are. ”

“ Yet, whenever she woke in the night, she seemed to hear Caroline saying, "If it was not for Elliot!" with a foreboding that "If it was not for Gerald!" might be on her tongue in the same manner, for the rest of her life.
Every time Gerald's name was mentioned, there was a pang; every time she thought of him in solitude, the fear and anxiety gained strength. Consciousness of ignorance added to its poignancy; and young as she was, it would be hard to describe how much suffering she underwent in secret, night after night, as she lay awake, in her perplexed musings on that one absorbing thought. ”

“ Lyddell thought it best, and so did the dentist," said Marian.
"O," said Caroline, "he only said so because it was his trade."
"Then how could Mrs. Lyddell depend on him?" said Marian, gravely.
"Dentists never are to be depended on," said Caroline; "they only try to fill their own pockets like other people."
"You forget," said Lionel, "Devonshire men are not like other people."
"O yes, I beg their pardon," said Caroline, while every one laughed except Gerald; who thought the praise only their due.
"But why did you have it done?" said Clara, returning to the charge; "I am sure I never would." ”

“ Marian explained what was on her mind, how she had, without intending it, flatly contradicted Mrs. Lyddell's cheering assurances, regretting it much, as injustice towards Mrs. Lyddell, but of this, Caroline thought little.
"Mamma is always sanguine," she said, "and it was only her colouring that made Lionel think her account hopeful. It must be better for him, poor fellow, to know the truth, than to have his mind unsettled with vain hopes. O dear! O dear! how sad it is, and at his age too! It breaks one's heart to think of it." ”

“ To be comforter and adviser sounds like a delightful privilege, and so, thought Marian, it would be, if one could only do it; but to have all the opportunity,—to have people coming for comfort, and not in the least be able to afford it, neither to relieve them, nor to be sure that she had not done them harm was to the highest degree painful and unsatisfactory. And from Lionel's repinings to Caroline's doubts, she went, suffering for each, equally unable to console either, and wondering which was the saddest case. ”

“ Marian."
"Every one must be glad to have done right," said Marian, firmly.
"O what a week it has been! And I have sown dissension in the family! And no one can tell what may be the consequence with Elliot! And he will be unhappy! O! Marian—I wish—I wish you had let me go on my own way and be miserable alone," added she with a kind of anger.
"It was your own doing," said Marian gently; "you felt it to be right. Only worse misery could come of your going on, for that would have been positive wrong; now it must and will get better."
"I don't know," sighed Caroline. ”

“ It was not till the afternoon that they left the railroad, and then they had a two hours' drive through a country which Marian found very unlike her own: the bleak, bare downs of Wiltshire, low green hills rising endlessly one after the other, the white road visible far away before them, the chalk pits white and cold, a few whitey brown ponds now and then, and at long intervals a farm house, looking as if it had been set down there by mistake, and did not like it, carts full of chalk, and flocks of sheep the chief moving objects they met, and not many of them. ”

“ I could go home for his holidays. I must not deceive myself; I have been put in the way of positive duties here, or rather, ways of being useful have grown up round me. Is it right to run away from them,—poor Lionel, poor Clara! Would not every weary hour of Lionel's—every time Clara was teased, and teased her father,—be my fault? But how Edmund and Agnes will be disappointed!—they who will have been throwing away so much kind care! O you goose of a Marian! are you going to fancy it is for your sake that they mean to marry? don't you think they can do very well without you? ”

“ Marian began to dread lest the parting had not been final, and though doubtful whether she ought to ask, could not help saying, "But is it over?"
"Yes, yes; you have your wish, Marian. It is done! He is angry with me now! It is over, and I am wretched for life!"
"Not so wretched as if you had done wrong." said Marian. Caroline did not turn away this time, and Marian gathered courage to say, "You have persevered, and now there will be comfort. There will always be comfort in knowing you have tried to do right. ”

“ Marian has a good deal of pride in her own way, though she is a dear girl!"
"Marian!" exclaimed Agnes.
"O yes! She is a dear girl, but every one in Wiltshire speaks of her pride; all our friends do, I assure you. I always defend her, of course, but every one remarks it."
Agnes was wondering whether simply to disbelieve anything so preposterous as that all Wiltshire should be remarking on poor Marian's pride, or whether to explain it by her well-known shyness, when Clara made another sudden transition. "Do you know Mr. Arundel?"
"O yes."
"Is not he a fine, distinguished looking man? ”

“ I declare papa shall hear of it."
"Lionel, do you know what you are saying?" said Caroline.
"This is sadly naughty!" feebly murmured Miss Morley.
"Lionel, mamma will be very angry," said Clara.
"I don't care," said Lionel loudly and vehemently; "I know that you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves, every one of you. Why, if you were boys you would never hold up your heads again; but girls can do anything, and that is the reason they have no shame."
"Hush! Lionel, dear Lionel!" ”

“ Gerald was chilled and went back to Lionel, who had plenty of ready sympathy for him; a story half caught from his mamma's report, half guessed at, that the old lady had looked full at the beast's curly tail, and had said she had never seen anything so like Lady Marchmont; the assertion of his own certainty that Gerald would never give in nor own that poor unfortunate had spoken the truth, and Gerald felt triumphant, as if his self-will had been something heroic, and his imprisonment and going to school a martyrdom. It did not last, Gerald's nature was gentle and retiring ”

“ Marian would have been grateful to him, had she known all that he averted from her, a stuffed fox, an immense pebble brooch, a pair of slippers covered with sportive demons. At every shop which furnished guns, knives, or fishing tackle, they stopped and lamented that she was not a boy, there was nothing in the world fit for girls; they tried a bazaar, and pronounced everything trumpery, and Walter was beginning to get into despair, when at last Lionel came to a stop before a print shop, calling out, "Hollo, Gerald, here's Beauty and the Beast itself!" ”

“ A person must have lived like Marian, pent up by formalities and the certainty of being disliked, to know what was the enjoyment of the perfect liberty and absence from constraint, the thorough home-like feeling of every one loving and understanding each other, which existed at Fern Torr. How delightful it was to have no heart achings for Gerald, to see Edmund just like his old self, and the dear Agnes, so very lovely and bright! ”

“ Only if the fortune comes, one does not know how, with cattle, or horses, or lands—O, Marian, think of being an Australian stockman, riding after those famous jockeys of wild bulls—hurra!" Lionel rose in his stirrups, and flourished his whip round his head, so as greatly to amaze his steed. "There is a life to lead in a great place bigger than all Europe, instead of being stifled up in this little bit of a poky England, every profession choke full of people!" ”

“ You had better stand in a narrow pass, and challenge every passer-by to battle in defence of the beauty of Fern Torr."
"I don't care about every body; but you, Edmund, ought to be more dutiful to your own home."
"You are exclusive, Marian; but come," and he stuck his rod into the ground, "let us have some of your sandwiches."
"Not till you confess that you like Fern Torr better than all the fine places that you ever saw."
"Liking with all one's heart is one thing, admiring above all others is another, as you will find when you have seen more of the world, Marian." ”

“ Her days seemed to follow each other without animation or interest; and if it had not been for some of her lessons, and for his letters and Agnes Wortley's, she felt as if she could have done nothing but yawn till the holidays.
One day, as the young ladies were returning from a walk in the park, they saw a carriage standing at their own door,—too frequent an occurrence, as Marian thought, to call for such warm interest as Clara expressed. Yet even Marian grew eager when she heard her cousins exclaim that there was a coronet on it,—a Viscount's coronet. ”

“ Clara, was again, as in former times, her chief friend in the family; for Marian, after the first vexation, held her sense too cheap to blame her for her folly. It was the fault of the others that she had been put in the way of what could not fail to turn her head; so she listened, without showing many tokens of contempt, to her endless histories of dear Louisa, and all the plans at High Down,—of the witticisms that were perpetrated, the anticipations of amusement and admiration, and of the tracasseries which Miss Grimley had not failed to occasion. ”

“ Caroline, for a man's faith to be unsettled is the worst of all, for then there is nothing to fall back upon."
Caroline stood by Marian's fire, looking thoughtful for some moments. "Yes," she said, "you and Walter are in the same mind there, but it is not like what I was brought up to think. Miss Cameron used to teach us that the being in earnest in believing was the thing rather than the form of faith."
"O, Caroline, that cannot be right. We have been commanded to hold one form of faith, and it must be wrong to set up another and hold it." ”

“ Lionel mimicked the clerk so drolly, that in spite of "Don't, my dear," and "O! Lionel," nobody could help laughing; and Johnny added an imitation of the clerk at their church in London. After the mirth was over, Gerald went on, "Why does not every one say Amen here?"
"Like so many charity children," said Lionel, with a nasal drawl.
"No, indeed!" cried Gerald, indignantly; "Edmund does it, and everybody." ”

“ How lonely the drawing-room has been, and nothing but nonsense if I went to the schoolroom. And then the boys,—Lionel has been so unruly there was no bearing it, and grumbling for you every day; and Johnny,—O, Marian, do you know it is settled that Johnny goes to sea, after all?"
"Johnny! I know he wished it, but I thought Mrs. Lyddell never would make up her mind to it."
"Ah! there have been storms in the higher quarters," said Caroline, with would-be gaiety. "You are very lucky to have been away all this time, for it has been by no means a serene sky. ”

“ Fanny was present, so Clara could do nothing but stare; and lateness, and a dinner-party necessitating a hasty toilette, she retreated, while Marian contained her raptures as best she could, and meditated on the delightful life she was to lead with Agnes and Edmund, in some cottage on the borders of Fern Torr. O happiness, such as she had never known, which seemed to bring back as much of her home as could ever return,—which would be everything for Gerald! Every care gone, Edmund happy, Gerald satisfactory, her own exile at an end. ”

“ O, Marian, Marian, I wish I could die."
"It will be over in time!" repeated Marian.
"Yes, but it will not be over. Mamma, papa, O I shall be reproached with it for ever; I shall know I have made him unhappy. O would that I could begin all over again!"
"You will have comfort at last in having been strong. The greater the effort the nobler it is! O, Caroline, do only hold out nobly. It is so glorious to have something to suffer for the sake of doing right!" ”