All her movements were sharp, decided, and energetic; and, though she was never much of a talker, her words were remarkably direct, and to the purpose, when she did speak.

In her habits, she was a living impersonation of order, method, and exactness.  In punctuality, she was as inevitable as a clock, and as inexorable as a railroad engine; and she held in most decided contempt and abomination anything of a contrary character.

The great sin of sins, in her eyes,—­the sum of all evils,—­was expressed by one very common and important word in her vocabulary—­“shiftlessness.”  Her finale and ultimatum of contempt consisted in a very emphatic pronunciation of the word “shiftless;” and by this she characterized all modes of procedure which had not a direct and inevitable relation to accomplishment of some purpose then definitely had in mind.  People who did nothing, or who did not know exactly what they were going to do, or who did not take the most direct way to accomplish what they set their hands to, were objects of her entire contempt,—­a contempt shown less frequently by anything she said, than by a kind of stony grimness, as if she scorned to say anything about the matter.

As to mental cultivation,—­she had a clear, strong, active mind, was well and thoroughly read in history and the older English classics, and thought with great strength within certain narrow limits.  Her theological tenets were all made up, labelled in most positive and distinct forms, and put by, like the bundles in her patch trunk; there were just so many of them, and there were never to be any more.  So, also, were her ideas with regard to most matters of practical life,—­such as housekeeping in all its branches, and the various political relations of her native village.  And, underlying all, deeper than anything else, higher and broader, lay the strongest principle of her being—­conscientiousness.  Nowhere is conscience so dominant and all-absorbing as with New England women.  It is the granite formation, which lies deepest, and rises out, even to the tops of the highest mountains.

Miss Ophelia was the absolute bond-slave of the “ought.”  Once make her certain that the “path of duty,” as she commonly phrased it, lay in any given direction, and fire and water could not keep her from it.  She would walk straight down into a well, or up to a loaded cannon’s mouth, if she were only quite sure that there the path lay.  Her standard of right was so high, so all-embracing, so minute, and making so few concessions to human frailty, that, though she strove with heroic ardor to reach it, she never actually did so, and of course was burdened with a constant and often harassing sense of deficiency;—­this gave a severe and somewhat gloomy cast to her religious character.

But, how in the world can Miss Ophelia get along with Augustine St. Clare,—­gay, easy, unpunctual, unpractical, sceptical,—­in short,—­walking with impudent and nonchalant freedom over every one of her most cherished habits and opinions?