Julia Goddard

“ Yes, he must want her to marry a rich man. Of course he does. Jasper is far-seeing; and I am afraid I have been very unwise in allowing this engagement; but it’s impossible to contend with such a girl as Di.”
And Mrs. Seaton—without waiting for an answer to her “Why?”—felt perfectly satisfied that there was no occasion for one. So, folding her hands complacently, she basked in the great yellow rays that came burning into the room, and fell to lamenting the day that Robert Ellis had died, and sent his daughter home to England.
Jasper Seaton continued pacing up and down the room. ”

“ But Diana interrupted her.
“ If that is what the Catechism teaches, I'm not going to learn it.” And she closed the book deliberately, and gave it back to Dolly. “I believe,” she continued, after a moment’s consideration, “that they are not as good as you are. You’re not as greedy as the rector, and you don’t go into passions and be cross, like Mrs. Seaton and Jasper. Besides, you always speak the truth. I should think you were my better, Dolly.” ”

“ The village organist was a foreigner, a musical genius—a man who had grown old over his beloved organ, and his musty old volumes of Corelli, Clementi, Pergolesi, Marcello, and a host of other beloved Italian composers. ”

“ He was her only son—her only child, now that Anne was dead. He had been more to her even than her daughter; for her daughter had married early, and had lived all her married life in France, and had died there within the last two months, after a short widowhood spent among her husband’s relatives.
“You were much too young to be made a guardian. Let me see: it’s twelve years since Di came to us—going on for thirteen. It was absurd. But I dare say Robert Ellis thought you would marry her in the end ”

“ Di is getting quite a woman now; and there’s no saying what unlikely things may happen when people are thrown together.”
Jasper Seaton might or might not have heard his mother’s speculations; if he had, he paid no attention to them: he was pursuing his own train of thought. ”

“ Against the wall, opposite to the tapestry, were all the pictures of which Di was possessed, and which she had collected since childhood—some in frames, some without; and over the fireplace—which was of Gothic design—reared on brackets, were two figures, painted bronze colour—one a soldier of the time of Francis I., the other a Roman warrior. The mantelpiece boasted two plaster casts of classic subjects; two lions, after Michael Angelo, also in plaster; several china cats and dogs; a china cottage, with & scarlet roof and a chimney much too large for it ”