ffer it to
Richard when he comes; say, you think he must have dropped it."

The dimple in Clare's cheek quivered.

Mother and daughter had never spoken explicitly of Richard. Mrs. Doria,
by exquisite management, had contrived to be sure that on one side there
would be no obstacle to her project of general happiness, without, as she
thought, compromising her daughter's feelings unnecessarily. It could do
no harm to an obedient young girl to hear that there was no youth in the
world like a certain youth. He the prince of his generation, she might
softly consent, when requested, to be his princess; and if never
requested (for Mrs. Doria envisaged failure), she might easily transfer
her softness to squires of lower degree. Clare had always been blindly
obedient to her mother (Adrian called them Mrs. Doria Battledoria and the
fair Shuttlecockiana), and her mother accepted in this blind obedience
the text of her entire character. It is difficult for those who think
very earnestly for their children to know when their children are
thinking on their own account. The exercise of their volition we construe
as revolt. Our love does not like to be invalided and deposed from its
command, and here I think yonder old thrush on the lawn who has just
kicked the last of her lank offspring out of the nest to go shift for
itself, much the kinder of the two, though sentimental people do shrug
their shoulders at these unsentimental acts of the creatures who never
wander from nature. Now, excess of obedience is, to one who manages most
exquisitely, as bad as insurrection. Happily Mrs. Doria saw nothing in
her daughter's manner save a want of iron. Her pallor, her lassitude, the
tremulous nerves in her face, exhibited an imperious requirement of the
mineral.

"The reason why men and women are mysterious to us, and prove
disappointing," we learn from The Pilgrim's Scrip, "is, that we will read
them from our own book; just as we are perplexed by reading ourselves
from theirs."

Mrs. Doria read her daughter from her own book, and she was gay; she
laughed with Adrian at the breakfast-table, and mock-seriously joined in
his jocose assertion that Clare was positively and by all hymeneal
auspices betrothed to the owner of that ring, be he who he may, and must,
whenever he should choose to come and claim her, give her hand to him
(for everybody agreed the owner must be masculine, as no woman would drop
a wedding-ring), and follow him whither he li