Mrs. Henry Wayland Chetwynd

“ Margaret was mute.
"How can I tell what you consider good-looking," he answered, roughly. "He is a fine strong well-built fellow, and has seen a great deal of the world, and he is a successful man, which is more than being good-looking or amusing, let me tell you."
"If he has seen the world he will be at any rate interesting," said Mrs. Dorriman, rising; but when they had reached the door he called her back, and said in a tone of mystery:
"You spoke of society and giving the girls a chance. I don't wish Margaret away, but if George Drayton takes a fancy to Grace she will have to take him." ”

“ Instead of the usual sneering tone in which John Sandford addressed his sister, she was startled out of herself by hearing him speak with civility. The surprise gave her a brilliant glow, which touched her face with colour and lightened it up. Mr. Dorriman thought her lovely. Her gentle helplessness was another great attraction, an attraction which every day's acquaintance increased. Without fully understanding how it all came about she found herself Mrs. Dorriman, and content to be so and to get away from the roughness and unkindness which was all that she ever knew of the brotherly tie. ”

“ Forgive me, but love was stronger than duty. I tried hard to win Margaret, I pleaded with her, she must have seen that I was in earnest, she must have known I loved her.... She refused me, mother, refused me as one beneath her, and she was right, she said I was a boy and a trifler. I have told you, as you were building false hopes, but I cannot speak of it again."
He turned away, and his mother sat upright in her great astonishment. All mortification at his not having after all taken her advice was forgotten in her supreme surprise at her son's having actually been refused. ”

“ We feel it as irreverent to allow a careless hand to touch our holiest and highest thoughts as we do if a scoffer enters a church with us. Poor Margaret, often perplexed, asking herself questions that have always baffled the wisest men, blamed her own want of perception for not understanding. She had a high ideal, a desire for the best, and she was often miserable because of a supposed short-coming of a faith that was not unwavering. To turn to Grace, who was, she thought, so far her superior in point of cleverness, would have been such an endless comfort to her. ”

“ Those unwritten words might be of terrible moment to him, for, as all men have their ambition in one or another corner, John Sandford had his—to be looked up to and to be respected. He was wealthy, but he remembered enough of the old days to know that mere wealth would bring but outward respect, and that character was the real power there, in that land where he craved for power. For power was what he really loved; he loved to feel that his will was law, and till his poor half-sister married he had made her feel this, as he tried to make every one else feel it. ”

“ Grace was silent, kept silent by surprise and by a passionate and impatient remonstrance against the position she was placed in. It was intolerable to her to have this weight of obligation with no affection to lighten it.
"He weighs us down with the sense of obligation," she said at length; "if he were really generous he would make the load lighter."
"He is a human being and imperfect," said poor Mrs. Dorriman, who, while acknowledging the truth of this, felt it came ungratefully from the lips of Grace Rivers, who owed him so much. ”

“ Dorriman in her whole life had been indebted to the poor for all the love and real kindness she had ever known—many a kind woman pitying the motherless child, had cheered her, many a man remembering the sweet sad face of the mother who had lived her short life amongst them, a life short but full of sweetest remembrances to all whom it had touched, had shown their gratitude to the mother in kindness to the child. ”

“ Sandford marched off with his sister.
Placing her at the head of the table, he said in his most pompous manner, "It is my wish that you act as mistress of my house, and that all should consider you in that light," and he glared round as though many were there to hear this, and not only two girls who already understood this.
Mrs. Dorriman, conscious of an action antagonistic to his wishes, sat silent, feeling as though she were a traitor; never was there any one more acutely self-tormenting, more sensitive about anything she did, than this poor lady. ”

“ The rosy-cheeked boy who drove, was gifted by nature with no desire for conversation, and Mrs. Dorriman took a book to beguile the tediousness of the way, which she read, as we do at times, without taking in the sense of it, her mind full of the approaching change, and the plan she had suddenly made, and which was at variance with all the previous habits of her life.
That love of beautiful scenery which few people are really born without, made her from time to time raise her head and look around her. ”

“ There is an instinct in unspoiled girlhood which is often an unerring guide. Margaret disliked Paul Lyons from the first; the ready change of tone, the slighting observations at every moment about Mrs. Dorriman's tastes, which Grace thought so natural and so witty, displeased her. She thought him worse than he was. His manner to his mother was so careless, and he so openly scoffed at her views, that she did not give him credit for the hours he spent beside her when she was ill, or for the affection he had for her. ”

“ Every day is like the day that has gone before; each day is as dull and as empty of anything we can care about."
"You will be surprised, Grace; but I want you to promise not to laugh at him."
"Laugh at him!" re-echoed Grace. "Is it Mr. Sandford?"
"No, he knows nothing, and of course we must not tell him."
"Him—you said I was not to laugh at him," said Grace, suddenly startled into consciousness. "Is it anything connected with Mr. Drayton?"
"Yes," murmured Margaret, in a low voice, "he spoke to me this evening. He told me, Grace, that he—loved me. ”

“ Grace, full of vanity, was insatiable in her appetite for applause. She took endless trouble to obtain attention, conceiving attention invariably to mean admiration. Not all Margaret's love for her could conceal the fact from her widely-opening eyes, and to the higher character of the severe young sister this intense vanity was almost a worse fault than one perhaps of a stronger type. It seemed to her to be so absolutely beneath the dignity of a woman, and of such a woman as Grace. ”

“ Dorriman, instead of preparing to depart, wandered over the little place, every nook and corner of which was sweet to her at all times, and was doubly dear to her now she was going away. Late in the afternoon of the third day she was walking down the burn-side, stopping ever and again to look with renewed admiration at the scenery round her, and watching the purple bloom upon the distant hills as the evening shadows came down, a purple tinge which was reflected in the sea except where a blaze of gold in the sky shone with more broken lights below ”

“ Dorriman was one of the women whose lives have been pursued by perpetual failure. Her childhood had been a neglected one, her youth had been the same; she was hurried into a marriage with a man much older than herself, whom, if she did not dislike, she had no real love for, and towards whom, when adversity came, she had nothing to draw her, for adversity is the highest test of love, and if there is no deep affection the breath of non-success kills it at once. ”

“ What do you consider good?"
"Mr. Sandford's arrival; is it possible, my dear Paul, you do not understand the full importance of this. Have you not realized what this means?"
"Certainly not."
"Men are so dreadfully dense," said the mother, with a gesture of impatience.
"Will you enlighten me, since I am only a man and so dense." He spoke in a tone of good-humoured banter.
"My dear Paul," she began, looking at him with much affection, "you have been a dear good son, a dutiful son, and in this instance I am sure a wise one—you have kept away from Margaret Rivers till something was known. ”