"Not openly, not manifestly I am sure. Do you think that there are no temptations in your way?"
"Everybody has temptations."
"Who will have more than you? Have you thought that every tenant, every labourer on the estate will have a claim on you?"
"How can I have thought of anything yet?"
"Don't be angry with me, dear, if I bid you think of it. I think of it,—more I know than I ought to do. I have been so placed that I could do but little good and little harm to others than myself. The females of a family such as ours, unless they marry, are very insignificant in the world. You who but a few years ago were a little school girl in Brotherton have now been put over all our heads."
"I didn't want to be put over anybody's head."
"Fortune has done it for you, and your own attractions. But I was going to say that little as has been my power and low as is my condition, I have loved the family and striven to maintain its respectability. There is not, I think, a face on the estate I do not know. I shall have to go now and see them no more."
"Why should you go?"
"It will probably be proper. No married man likes to have his unmarried sisters in his house."
"I shall like you. You shall never go."