Fanny stared, and Amelia gave a faint laugh. My Aunt Kezia said no more, but went on running tucks: and Amelia joined in the conversation between Cecilia and Mr Parmenter. I hardly listened, for I was trying the new knitting stitch which Flora taught me, and it is rather a difficult one, so that it took all my mind: but all at once I heard Amelia say,—
“The beauty of self-sacrifice!”
My Aunt Kezia lapped up the petticoat in which she was running the tucks, laid it on her knee, folded her hands on it, and looked full at Amelia.
“Will you please, Miss Emily Bracewell, to tell me what you mean?”
“Mean, Aunt?”
“Yes, my dear, mean.”
“How can the spirit of that sweet poetical creature,” murmured Fanny, behind me, “be made plain to such a mere thing of fact as my Aunt Kezia?”
“Well,” said Amelia, in a rather puzzled tone, “I mean—I mean—the beauty of self-sacrifice. I do not see how else to put it.”
“And what makes it beautiful, think you?” said my Aunt Kezia.
“It is beautiful in itself,” said Amelia. “It is the fairest thing in the moral world. We see it in all the analogies of creation.”