‘Why isn’t your brother here? I should insist on his coming down in discreet black, with a white tie and that look of imposing solemnity young Englishmen assume for dinner.’
‘Dick guessed what was coming, and would not encounter it.’
‘And yet you tell me you submit to all this for no earthly reason. She can leave you no legacy, contribute in no way to your benefit. She has neither family, fortune, nor connections; and, except her atrocious manners and her indomitable temper, there is not a trait of her that claims to be recorded.’
‘Oh yes; she rides capitally to hounds, and hunts her own harriers to perfection.’
‘I am glad she has one quality that deserves your favour.’
‘She has others, too, which I like better than what they call accomplishments. She is very kind to the poor, never deterred by any sickness from visiting them, and has the same stout-hearted courage for every casualty in life.’
‘A commendable gift for a squaw, but what does a gentlewoman want with this same courage?’
‘Look out of the window, Nina, and see where you are living! Throw your eyes over that great expanse of dark bog, vast as one of the great campagnas you have often described to us, and bethink you how mere loneliness—desolation—needs a stout heart to bear it; how the simple fact that for the long hours of a summer’s day, or the longer hours of a winter’s night, a lone woman has to watch and think of all the possible casualties lives of hardship and misery may impel men to. Do you imagine that she does not mark the growing discontent of the people? see their careworn looks, dashed with a sullen determination, and hear in their voices the rising of a hoarse defiance that was never heard before? Does she not well know that every kindness she has bestowed, every merciful act she has ministered, would weigh for nothing in the balance on the day that she will be arraigned as a landowner—the receiver of the poor man’s rent! And will you tell me after this she can dispense with courage?’
‘Bel paese davvero!’ muttered the other.
‘So it is,’ cried Kate; ‘with all its faults I’d not exchange it for the brightest land that ever glittered in a southern sun. But why should I tell you how jarred and disconcerted we are by laws that have no reference to our ways—conferring rights where we were once contented with trustfulness, and teaching men to do everything by contract, and nothing by affection, nothing by good-will.’