"An unmanly act—but a just lesson! He is marvellously improved by his marriage. Was it a love-match?"
"I believe so. Alice is a lovely girl; just the equable temperament to balance his flightiness. What a contrast to his sister!"
"Has she taken the veil?"
"Alas! yes! She wrote to me, at her mother's death, that 'having lost both parents, and her brother's marriage making him independent of her cares, she should devote the remnant of her sorrowful days to prayer and expiation of her sins—if penitence and mortification could atone.'"
"If, indeed!" says Mr. Lacy. "Yet she is more sinned against, than sinning. Her remorse, much as it misguides her, is more creditable than her step-daughter's insensibility."
"Poor Josephine!" sighs Ida.
"Why 'poor?'" asks Charley. "You, of all people, have least cause to be sorry for her."
"I have most, because I know her best. She is not happy—never was—and never will be unless her heart is changed. I have not forgotten the misery of a part of my sojourn with her; yet I honestly preferred my to state hers."
"You are very unlike."
"Now, perhaps—and I thought we were then; but my mother's training was all that saved my disposition from adapting itself to Mr. Read's mould. She had no talisman. I wish she had a hundredth part of my happiness. A woman is so lonely without a home and friends! They are to us—I do not say to you—necessaries of life."