seems, if not presumptuous, silly, weak, a delusion, an absurd mistake. They
do not love these gentlemen - whatever sisterly affection they may cherish
towards them - and that others should, repels them with a sense of crude
romance. The first movement, in short, excited by such discovery (as with many
parents on finding their children to be in love), is one of mixed impatience and
contempt. Reason - if they be rational people - corrects the false feeling in
time; but if they be irrational, it is never corrected, and the daughter or
sister-in-law is disliked to the end.
    »You would expect to find me alone, from what I said in my note,« observed
Miss Moore, as she conducted Caroline towards the parlour; »but it was written
this morning: since dinner, company has come in.«
    And, opening the door, she made visible an ample spread of crimson skirts
overflowing the elbow-chair at the fireside, and above them, presiding with
dignity, a cap more awful than a crown. That cap had never come to the cottage
under a bonnet: no, it had been brought in a vast bag, or rather a middle-sized
balloon of black silk, held wide with whalebone. The screed, or frill of the
cap, stood a quarter of a yard broad round the face of the wearer: the ribbon,
flourishing in puffs and bows about the head, was of the sort called
love-ribbon: there was a good deal of it, - I may say, a very great deal. Mrs.
Yorke wore the cap - it became her: she wore the gown also - it suited her no
less.
    That great lady was come in a friendly way to take tea with Miss Moore. It
was almost as great and as rare a favour as if the Queen were to go uninvited to
share pot-luck with one of her subjects: a higher mark of distinction she could
not show, - she who, in general, scorned visiting and tea-drinking, and held
cheap, and stigmatized as gossips, every maid and matron of the vicinage.
    There was no mistake, however; Miss Moore was a favourite with her: she had
evinced the fact more than once; evinced it by stopping to speak to her in the
churchyard on Sundays; by inviting her, almost hospitably, to come to
Briarmains; evinced it to-day by the grand condescension of a personal visit.
Her reasons for the preference, as assigned by herself, were, that Miss Moore
was