“Are you very fond of Miss Osborne?”
“I never was particularly fond of her,” I said, rather hotly, and I felt my cheeks flush; “and if I had been, I think this morning would have put an end to it.”
“She is not true,” he said. “She rings like false metal. Those who trust in her professions will find the earth open and let them in. And I should not like you to be one, Cary.”
“Thank you, Ephraim,” said I. “I think there is no fear.”
“Your Cousin Amelia is foolish,” he went on, “but I do not think she is false. She will grow out of most of her nonsense. But Cecilia Osborne never will. It is ingrain. She is an older woman at this moment than Mrs Kezia.”
“Older than my Aunt Kezia!” I am afraid I stared.
“I do not mean by the parish register, Cary,” said Ephraim, with a smile. “But she is old in Satan’s ways and wiles, in the hard artificial fashions of the world, in everything which, if I had a sister, I should pray God she might never know anything about. Such women are dangerous. I speak seriously, Caroline.”
I thought it had come to a serious pass, when Ephraim called me Caroline.
“It is not altogether a bad thing to know people for what they are,” he continued. “It may hurt you at the time to have the veil taken off; and that veil, whether by the people themselves or by somebody else, is often pulled off very roughly. But it is better than to have it on, Cary, or to see the ugly thing through beautiful coloured glass, which makes it look all kinds of lovely hues that it is not. The plain white glass is the best. When you do come to something beautiful, then, you see how beautiful it is.” Then, changing his tone, he went on,—“Esther Langridge sent you her love, Cary, and told me to say she was coming up here this afternoon.”
I did not quite wish that Esther would keep away, and yet I came very near doing it. She is not a beautiful thing—I mean in her ways and manners. She speaks more broadly than Sophy, and much worse than the rest of us, and she eats her peas with a knife, which Grandmamma used to say was the sure sign of a vulgar creature. Esther is as kind-hearted a girl as breathes; but—oh dear, what will Cecilia say to her! I felt quite uncomfortable.