‘I can hardly imagine greater proofs of affection than Mrs. Hawkesworth has given you,’ said Miss Weston, smiling.
‘It was because it was her duty,’ said Lilias. ‘You have only heard the facts, but you cannot judge of her ways and looks. Now only think, when Frank came home, after seven years of perils by field and flood—there she rose up to receive him as if he had been Mr. Nobody making a morning call. And all the time before they were married, I do believe she thought more of showing Emily how much tea we were to use in a week than anything else.’
‘Perhaps some people might have admired her self-command,’ said Alethea.
‘Self-command, the refuge of the insensible? And now, I told you about dear Harry the other day. He was Eleanor’s especial brother, yet his death never seemed to make any difference to her. She scarcely cried: she heard our lessons as usual, talked in her quiet voice—showed no tokens of feeling.’
‘Was her health as good as before?’ asked Miss Weston.
‘She was not ill,’ said Lily; ‘if she had, I should have been satisfied. She certainly could not take long walks that winter, but she never likes walking. People said she looked ill, but I do not know.’
‘Shall I tell you what I gather from your history?’
‘Pray do.’
‘Then do not think me very perverse, if I say that perhaps the grief she then repressed may have weighed down her spirits ever since, so that you can hardly remember any alteration.’
‘That I cannot,’ said Lily. ‘She is always the same, but then she ought to have been more cheerful before his death.’