“No, dear; it is the one subject—I mean love in any shape—that we never discussed. The poor boy confessed to me all his grief about his purposeless idle life, his mother's straitened fortune, and his uncle's heartless indifference; everything, in short, that lay heavily on his heart.”
“Everything but the heaviest, Alice,” said the other smiling.
“Well, if he had opened that sorrow, I 'd have heard him without anger; I'd have honestly told him it was a very vain and fruitless pursuit. But still my own heart would have declared to me that a young fellow is all the better for some romance of this kind,—that it elevates motives and dignifies actions, and, not least of all advantages, makes him very uncompanionable for creatures of mere dissipation and excess.”
“But that, of course, you were merely objective the while,—the source from which so many admirable results were to issue, and never so much as disturbed by the breath of his attachment. Is n't that so?”
“I 'd have said, 'You 're a very silly boy if you imagine that anything can come of all this. '”
“And if he were to ask for the reason, and say, 'Alice, are you not your own mistress, rich, free to do whatever you incline to do? Why should you call me a fool for loving you?'”
“Take my word for it, Bella, he 'll never risk the answer he 'd be sure to meet to such a speech,” said the other, haughtily; and Isabella, who felt a sort of awe of her sister at certain moments, desisted from the theme. “Look! yonder they go, Maitland and Rebecca, not exactly arm-inarm, but with bent-down heads, and that propinquity that implies close converse.”
“I declare I feel quite jealous,—I mean on your account, Bella,” said Mrs. Trafford.
“Never mind my interests in the matter, Alice,” said she, reddening; “it is a matter of the most complete indifference to me with whom he walks or talks. Mr. Norman Maitland is not to me one whit more of consequence than is Tony Butler to my sister.”
“That's a confession, Bella,—a confession wrung out of a hasty moment; for Tony certainly likes me, and I know it.”