Louis spoke of his regret that scenes of uncongenial gaiety should have been forced upon her last year.

‘I believe it made very little difference to her,’ said Clara.  ’She did just what Uncle Oliver wished, but only as she used to play with us, no more; nay, rather less for her own amusement than as she would play at battledore, or at thread-paper verses.’

‘And she was not teased nor harassed?’

’I think not.  She was grieved if I were set against Uncle Oliver’s plans, and really hurt if she could not make him think as she did about right and wrong, but otherwise she was always bright.  She never found people tiresome; she could find something kind to say to and for the silliest; and when my uncle’s display was most provoking, she would only laugh at ‘poor Oliver’s’ odd notions of doing her honour.  I used to be quite ashamed of the fuss I would make when I thought a thing vulgar; when I saw that sort of vanity by the side of her real indifference, springing from unworldliness.’

‘And then her mornings were quiet?’

’More quiet than at home.  While we were riding, she used to sit with her dear old big Bible, and the two or three old books she was so fond of.  You remember her Sutton and her Bishop Home, and often she would show me some passage that had struck her as prettier than ever, well as she had always known it.  Once she said she was very thankful for the leisure time, free from household cares, and even from friendly gossip; for she said first she had been gay, then she had been busy, and had never had time to meditate quietly.’

’So she made a cloister of this grand house.  Ah!  I trusted she was past being hurt by external things.  That grand old age was like a pure glad air where worldly fumes ccnild not mount up.  My only fear would have been this unlucky estrangement making her unhappy.’

‘I think I may tell you how she felt it,’ said Clara; ’I am trying to tell James, but I don’t know whether I can.  She said she had come to perceive that she had confounded pride with independence.  She blamed herself, so that I could not bear to hear it, for the grand fine things in her life.  She said pride had made her stand alone, and unkindly spurn much that was kindly meant.  I don’t mean that she repented of the actions, but of the motives; she said the glory of being beholden to no one had run through everything; and had been very hurtful even to Uncle Oliver.  She never let him know all her straits, and was too proud, she said, to ask, when she was hurt at his not offering help, and so she made him seem more hard-hearted, and let us become set against him.  She said she had fostered the same temper in poor Jem, who had it strongly enough by inheritance, and that she had never known the evil, nor understood it as pride, till she saw the effects.’

‘Did they make her unhappy?’

’She cried when she spoke of it, and I have seen her in tears at church, and found her eyes red when she had been alone, but I don’t think it was a hard, cruel sorrow; I think the sunshine of her nature managed to beam through it.’