Langley took her rebuke meekly and in silence; but Cathy treated her brother to a contemptuous shrug and a disdainful look.
"Dora; I am sick of Dora. Every one sees how that will end," she said in a vexed voice, when they had come in from the garden, and she had followed her friend up-stairs. "When that happens I suppose we shall all be managed into our graves."
"Oh don't!" exclaimed Queenie, with a sudden accent of pain, and becoming somewhat pale over her words. "She is not good enough for him—for your brother."
"She is too good, you mean. I hate such faultless people. Dora is never in the wrong; she is a pattern daughter, a pattern sister, a model housekeeper, and unexceptionable in all parochial and social duties; the work she gets through would astonish your weak mind."
"And then she is so clever."
"Clever! she is a perfect paragon of learning. She educated her sisters until they went to Brussels. Then she is no mean musician; she works beautifully too, and copies out all her father's sermons. I am not sure she does not write them as well."
"Ah! now I can see you are joking."
"My dear, Dora is no joking matter, I can assure you; she and her goodness together are very ponderous affairs. Do you think Garth does not know all this? Why he and Dora have been friends ever since they were children."
"I can see that he respects her most thoroughly."
"Not more than she respects him; she is always telling how excellent he is, and what a model to other young men. When I am in a very good humor with Garth, I sometimes repeat these little speeches, only I have come lately to doubt the wisdom of adding fuel to the fire."