"There should be," said Miss Dale, wondering; and Clara cried: "I chafe at restraint: hedges and palings everywhere! I should have to travel ten years to sit down contented among these fortifications. Of course I can read of this rich kind of English country with pleasure in poetry. But it seems to me to require poetry. What would you say of human beings requiring it?"
"That they are not so companionable but that the haze of distance improves the view."
"Then you do know that you are the wisest?"
Laetitia raised her dark eyelashes; she sought to understand. She could only fancy she did; and if she did, it meant that Miss Middleton thought her wise in remaining single.
Clara was full of a sombre preconception that her "jealousy" had been hinted to Miss Dale.
"You knew Miss Durham?" she said.
"Not intimately."
"As well as you know me?"
"Not so well."
"But you saw more of her?"