"Were I in your place I should try to forget them, Pauline."
"You should have seen Sir Oswald's face when I told him I had read Comte and Darwin. He positively groaned aloud."
And she laughed as she remembered his misery.
"I feel very much inclined to groan myself," said Miss Hastings. "You shall have theories, or facts, higher, more beautiful, nobler, grander far than any Comte ever dreamed. And now we must begin to work in real earnest."
But Pauline Darrell did not move; her dark eyes were shadowed, her beautiful face grew sullen and determined.
"You are going to spoil my life," she said. "Hitherto it has been a glorious life—free, gladsome, and bright; now you are going to parcel it out. There will be no more sunshiny hours; you are going to reduce me to a kind of machine, to cut off all my beautiful dreams, my lofty thoughts. You want to make me a formal, precise young lady, who will laugh, speak, and think by rule."
"I want to make you a sensible woman, my dear Pauline," corrected Miss Hastings, gravely.
"Who is the better or the happier for being so sensible?" demanded Pauline.
She paused for a few minutes, and then she added, suddenly:
"Darrell Court and all the wealth of the Darrells are not worth it, Miss Hastings."