‘Oh! I am sorry you don’t like it,’ said Violet, ‘but that is the way with all sensible people.’
‘No; mamma says it is not being sensible, but because I don’t dance well, and she wishes I did.’
‘I am glad of that. My mamma does not think it foolish.’
‘Do you like dancing, then?’
‘That I do,’ cried Violet, making a few steps; ‘I only wish I might dance with him still!’
This was the only difference of opinion—on school-teaching books—heroes, historical and fictitious—on the “Bridal of Triermain”—and Wordsworth’s Waggoner, their sentiments accorded exactly. Perhaps Emma’s mind was the more formed and cultivated, but Violet’s was the more discerning and diffident in judgment.
Emma took the first opportunity of pouring out to her mother a perfect rapture about Mrs. Martindale, dwelling on her right views, and all that showed she had been well brought up.
‘She is a sweet-looking creature,’ said Lady Elizabeth, ‘and I do hope she is all she seems. Lord Martindale has been telling me how entirely the marriage was her father’s doing, and that she was perfectly ignorant and innocent, poor thing.’
‘She looks as if she could never do anything wrong. Mamma, I hardly know whether you would like me to make friends with her, but I could not help it, and she said such nice things that I knew you would like her. I never could get on with any one before, you know, but, from the moment she came blushing in, and spoke to me in that sweet low voice, I felt as if I most be fond of her—before I made out who she was—and even then I could not like her less.’
‘She is so unaffected and unassuming!’ said Lady Elizabeth. ‘I little expected Arthur Martindale’s marriage to have turned out so well.’