Harriet was neither specially clever nor specially pretty, but she was, I think, perhaps the most absolutely unselfish human being I ever knew, and one of the most loving hearts.  And her position was one, that, except in a nature framed of the kindliest clay, and moulded by the rarest perfection of all the gentlest and self-denying virtues, must have soured, or at all events crushed and quenched, the individual placed in such circumstances.  She was simply nobody in the family save the ministering angel in the house to all of them.  I do not mean that any of the vulgar preferences existed which are sometimes supposed to turn some less favoured member of a household into a Cinderella.  There was not the slightest shadow of anything of the sort.  But no visitors came to the house or sought the acquaintance of the family for her sake.  She had the dear, and, to her, priceless love of her sister.  But no admiration, no pride of father or mother fell to her share. Her life was not made brilliant by the notice and friendship of distinguished men.  Everything was for the younger sister.  And through long years of this eclipse, and to the last, she fairly worshipped the sister who eclipsed her.  Garrow, to do him justice, was equally affectionate in his manner to both girls, and entirely impartial in every respect that concerned the material well-being of them.  But Theodosia was always placed on a pedestal on which there was no room at all for Harriet.  Nor could the closest intimacy with the family discover any faintest desire on her part to share the pedestal She was content and entirely happy in enjoying the reflected brightness of the more gifted sister.

Nor would perhaps a shrewd judge, whose estimate of men and women had been formed by observation of average humanity, have thought that the position which I have described as that of the younger of these two sisters, was altogether a morally wholesome one for her.  But the shrewd judge would have been wrong.  There never was a humbler, as there never was a more loving soul, than that of the Theodosia Garrow who became, for my perfect happiness, Theodosia Trollope.  And it was these two qualities of humbleness and lovingness that, acting like invincible antiseptics on the moral nature, saved her from all “spoiling,”—­from any tendency of any amount of flattery and admiration to engender selfishness or self-sufficiency.  Nothing more beautiful in the way of family affection could be seen than the tie which united in the closest bonds of sisterly affection those two so differently constituted sisters.  Very many saw and knew what Theodosia was as my wife.  Very few indeed ever knew what she was in her own home as a sister.