“Yes!  I will keep these—­this ring and bracelet,” said Dorothea.  Then, letting her hand fall on the table, she said in another tone—­“Yet what miserable men find such things, and work at them, and sell them!” She paused again, and Celia thought that her sister was going to renounce the ornaments, as in consistency she ought to do.

“Yes, dear, I will keep these,” said Dorothea, decidedly.  “But take all the rest away, and the casket.”

She took up her pencil without removing the jewels, and still looking at them.  She thought of often having them by her, to feed her eye at these little fountains of pure color.

“Shall you wear them in company?” said Celia, who was watching her with real curiosity as to what she would do.

Dorothea glanced quickly at her sister.  Across all her imaginative adornment of those whom she loved, there darted now and then a keen discernment, which was not without a scorching quality.  If Miss Brooke ever attained perfect meekness, it would not be for lack of inward fire.

“Perhaps,” she said, rather haughtily.  “I cannot tell to what level I may sink.”

Celia blushed, and was unhappy:  she saw that she had offended her sister, and dared not say even anything pretty about the gift of the ornaments which she put back into the box and carried away.  Dorothea too was unhappy, as she went on with her plan-drawing, questioning the purity of her own feeling and speech in the scene which had ended with that little explosion.

Celia’s consciousness told her that she had not been at all in the wrong:  it was quite natural and justifiable that she should have asked that question, and she repeated to herself that Dorothea was inconsistent:  either she should have taken her full share of the jewels, or, after what she had said, she should have renounced them altogether.

“I am sure—­at least, I trust,” thought Celia, “that the wearing of a necklace will not interfere with my prayers.  And I do not see that I should be bound by Dorothea’s opinions now we are going into society, though of course she herself ought to be bound by them.  But Dorothea is not always consistent.”

Thus Celia, mutely bending over her tapestry, until she heard her sister calling her.

“Here, Kitty, come and look at my plan; I shall think I am a great architect, if I have not got incompatible stairs and fireplaces.”

As Celia bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek against her sister’s arm caressingly.  Celia understood the action.  Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong, and Celia pardoned her.  Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia’s mind towards her elder sister.  The younger had always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions?

CHAPTER II.