"Oh! Agnes, Agnes! I cannot hear you—"
"Pshaw!" interrupted the younger sister, very bitterly, "this affectation of sentiment and disinterestedness sits very prettily on the heiress of Ditton-in-the-Dale, Long Netherby, and Waltham Ferrers, three manors, and ten thousand pounds a year to buy a bridegroom! Poor I, with my face for my fortune, must needs make my wit eke out my want of dowry. And I'm not one, I promise you, siss, to choose love in a cottage. No, no! Give me your Lord St. George, and I'll make over all my right and title to poor George Delawarr this minute. Heigho! I believe the fellow is smitten with me after all. Well, well! I'll have some fun with him before I have done yet."
"Agnes," said Blanche, gravely, but reproachfully, "I have long seen that you are light, and careless whom you wound with your wild words, but I never thought before that you were bad-hearted."
"Bad-hearted, sister!"
"Yes! bad-hearted! To speak to me of manors, or of money, as if for fifty wills, or five hundred fathers, I would ever profit by a parent's whim to rob my sister of her portion. As if I would not rather lie in the cold grave, than that my sister should have a wish ungratified, which I had power to gratify, much less that she should narrow down the standard of her choice—the holiest and most sacred thing on earth—to the miserable scale of wealth and title. Out upon it! out upon it! Never, while you live, speak so to me again!"
"Sister, I never will. I did not mean it, sister, dear," cried Agnes, now much affected, as she saw how vehemently Blanche was moved. "You should not heed me. You know my wild, rash way, and how I speak whatever words come first."
"Those were very meaning words, Agnes—and very bitter, too. They cut me to the heart," cried the fair girl, bursting into a flood of passionate tears.
"Oh! do not—do not, Blanche. Forgive me, dearest! Indeed, indeed, I meant nothing!"
"Forgive you, Agnes! I have nothing to forgive. I was not even angry, but pained, but sorry for you, sister; for sure I am, that if you give way to this bitter, jealous spirit, you will work much anguish to yourself, and to all those who love you."
"Jealous, Blanche!"