AGNES OF SORRENTO.
True beauty.
“A beautiful face is a kind of psalm Which makes one want to be good.”
Forcing a daughter.
“After all, sister, what need of haste? ’Tis a young bird yet. Why push it out of the nest? When once it is gone you will never get it back. Let the pretty one have her little day to play and sing and be happy. Does she not make this garden a sort of Paradise with her little ways and her sweet words? Now, my sister, these all belong to you; but, once she is given to another, there is no saying what may come. One thing only may you count on with certainty: that these dear days when she is all day by your side and sleeps in your bosom all night are over,—she will belong to you no more, but to a strange man who hath neither toiled nor wrought for her, and all her pretty ways and dutiful thoughts must be for him.”