that high strain about principle because it sounds well, and is respectable—­and even these things are better than your cold way of looking out for a wife, just as you would do for a carpet, to add to your comforts, and settle you respectably.  But I won’t be that wife.  You shall see something of me which shall make you not acquiesce so quietly in the arrangements of the firm.”  She cried too vehemently to go on thinking or speaking.  Then she stopped, and said—­

“Only an hour ago I was hoping—­I don’t know what I was hoping—­but I thought—­oh! how I was deceived!—­I thought he had a true, deep, loving manly heart, which God might let me win; but now I know he has only a calm, calculating head——­”

If Jemima had been vehement and passionate before this conversation with her father, it was better than the sullen reserve she assumed now whenever Mr. Farquhar came to the house.  He felt it deeply; no reasoning with himself took off the pain he experienced.  He tried to speak on the subjects she liked, in the manner she liked, until he despised himself for the unsuccessful efforts.  He stood between her and her father once or twice, in obvious inconsistency with his own previously expressed opinions; and Mr. Bradshaw piqued himself upon his admirable management, in making Jemima feel that she owed his indulgence or forbearance to Mr. Farquhar’s interference; but Jemima—­perverse, miserable Jemima—­thought that she hated Mr. Farquhar all the more.  She respected her father inflexible, much more than her father pompously giving up to Mr. Farquhar’s subdued remonstrances on her behalf.  Even Mr. Bradshaw was perplexed, and shut himself up to consider how Jemima was to be made more fully to understand his wishes and her own interests.  But there was nothing to take hold of as a ground for any further conversation with her.  Her actions were so submissive that they were spiritless; she did all her father desired; she did it with a nervous quickness and haste, if she thought that otherwise Mr. Farquhar would interfere in any way.  She wished evidently to owe nothing to him.  She had begun by leaving the room when he came in, after the conversation she had had with her father; but at Mr. Bradshaw’s first expression of his wish that she should remain, she remained—­silent, indifferent, inattentive to all that was going on; at least there was this appearance of inattention.  She would work away at her sewing as if she were to earn her livelihood by it; the light was gone out of her eyes as she lifted them up heavily before replying to any question, and the eyelids were often swollen with crying.

But in all this there was no positive fault.  Mr. Bradshaw could not have told her not to do this, or to do that, without her doing it; for she had become much more docile of late.

It was a wonderful proof of the influence Ruth had gained in the family, that Mr. Bradshaw, after much deliberation, congratulated himself on the wise determination he had made of requesting her to speak to Jemima, and find out what feeling was at the bottom of all this change in her ways of going on.  He rang the bell.