“It seems as impossible to make you enter into the characters of your mother and sister as it would be to teach them to comprehend yours, and far be it from me to act as interpreter betwixt your understandings.  If you can’t even imagine such things as prejudice, narrow-mindedness, envy, hatred, and malice, your ignorance is bliss, and you had better remain in it.  But you may take my word for one thing, and that is, that ’tis a much wiser thing to resist tyranny than to submit to it.  Your patient Grizzles make nothing of it, except in little books:  in real life they become perfect pack-horses, saddled with the whole offences of the family.  Such will you become unless you pluck up spirit and dash out.  Marry the Duke, and drive over the necks of all your relations; that’s my advice to you.”

“And you may rest assured that when I follow your advice it shall be in whole not in part.”

“Well, situated so detestably as you are, I rather think the best thing you could do would be to make yourself Duchess of Altamont.  How disdainful you look!  Come, tell me honestly now, would you really refuse to be Your Grace, with ninety thousand a year, and remain simple Mary Douglas, passing rich with perhaps forty?”

“Unquestionably,” said Mary.

“What! you really pretend to say you would not marry the Duke of Altamont?” cried Lady Emily.  “Not that I would take him myself; but as you and I, though the best of friends, differ widely in our sentiments on most subjects, I should really like to know how it happens that we coincide in this one.  Very different reasons, I daresay, lead to the same conclusion; but I shall generously give you the advantage of hearing mine first.  I shall say nothing of being engaged—­I shall even banish that idea from my thoughts; but were I free as air—­unloving and unloved—­I would refuse the Duke of Altamont; first, because he:  is old—­no, first, because he is stupid; second, because he is formal; third, because he swallows all Lady Matilda’s flummery; fourth, because he is more than double my age; fifth, because he is not handsome; and, to sum up the whole in the sixth, he wants that inimitable Je ne scais quoi which I consider as a necessary ingredient in the matrimonial cup.  I shall not, in addition to these defects, dwell upon his unmeaning stare, his formal bow, his little senseless simper, etc. etc. etc.  All these enormities, and many more of the same stamp, I shall pass by, as I have no doubt they had their due effect upon you as well as me; but then I am not like you, under the torments of Lady Juliana’s authority.  Were that the case, I should certainly think it a blessing to become Duchess of anybody to-morrow.”

“And can you really imagine,” said Mary, “that for the sake of shaking off a parent’s authority I would impose upon myself chains still heavier, and even more binding?  Can you suppose I would so far forfeit my honour and truth as that I would swear to love, honour, and obey, where I could feel neither love nor respect, and where cold constrained obedience would be all of my duty I could hope to fulfil?”