Elizabeth's eyes fired, and an answer was on her lip, but meeting the very composed face of the last speaker, as he put her foot in the stirrup, she thought better of it. She looked at him and asked,
"What if one does not choose to wear them?"
"Nothing for it but to fight Fortune," said Winthrop smiling; — "or go without any."
"I would rather go anyhow!" said Elizabeth, — "than be obliged to anybody, — of course except to my father."
"How if you had a husband?" inquired Mrs. Landholm with a good-humoured face.
It was a turn Elizabeth did not like; she did not answer Mrs.
Landholm as she would have answered her cousin. She hesitated.
"I never talk about that, Mrs. Landholm," she said a little haughtily, with a very pretty tinge upon her cheek; — "I would not be obliged to anybody but my father; — never."
"Why?" said Mrs. Landholm. "I don't understand."
"Don't you see, Mrs. Landholm, — the person under obligation is always the inferior."
"I never felt it so," she replied.