The ladies of Brookfield held no more their happy, energetic midnight consultations.  They had begun to crave for sleep and a snatch of forgetfulness, the scourge being daily on their flesh:  and they had now no plans to discuss; they had no distant horizon of low vague lights that used ever to be beyond their morrow.  They kissed at the bedroom door of one, and separated.  Silence was their only protection to the Nice Feelings, now that Fine Shades had become impossible.  Adela had almost made herself distinct from her sisters since the yachting expedition.  She had grown severely careful of the keys of her writing-desk, and would sometimes slip the bolt of her bedroom door, and answer “Eh?” dubiously in tone, when her sisters had knocked twice, and had said “Open” once.  The house of Brookfield showed those divisional rents which an admonitory quaking of the earth will create.  Neither sister was satisfied with the other.  Cornelia’s treatment of Sir Twickenham was almost openly condemned, but at the same time it seemed to Arabella that the baronet was receiving more than the necessary amount of consolation from the bride of Captain Gambier, and that yacht habits and moralities had been recently imported to Brookfield.  Adela, for her part, looked sadly on Arabella, and longed to tell her, as she told Cornelia, that if she continued to play Freshfield Sumner purposely against Edward Buxley, she might lose both.  Cornelia quietly measured accusations and judged impartially; her mind being too full to bring any personal observations to bear.  She said, perhaps, less than she would have said, had she not known that hourly her own Nice Feelings had to put up a petition for Fine Shades:  had she not known, indeed, that her conduct would soon demand from her sisters an absolutely merciful interpretation.  For she was now simply attracting Sir Twickenham to Brookfield as a necessary medicine to her Papa.  Since Mrs. Chump’s return, however, Mr. Pole had spoken cheerfully of himself, and, by innuendo emphasized, had imparted that his mercantile prospects were brighter.  In fact, Cornelia half thought that he must have been pretending bankruptcy to gain his end in getting the consent of his daughters to receive the woman.  She, and Adela likewise, began to suspect that the parental transparency was a little mysterious, and that there is, after all, more than we see in something that we see through.  They were now in danger of supposing that because the old man had possibly deceived them to some extent, he had deceived them altogether.  But was not the after-dinner scene too horribly true?  Were not his hands moist and cold while the forehead was crimson?  And could a human creature feel at his own pulse, and look into vacancy with that intense apprehensive look, and be but an actor?  They could not think so.  But his conditions being dependent upon them, the ladies felt in their hearts a spring of absolute rebellion when the call for fresh sacrifices came.  Though they did not grasp the image, they had a feeling that he was nourished bit by bit by everything they held dear; and though they loved him, and were generous, they had begun to ask, “What next?”