arters below. In
an unclouded harmony of tastes and interests they cultivated ferns in
Wardian cases, made macrame lace and wool embroidery on linen,
collected American revolutionary glazed ware, subscribed to "Good
Words," and read Ouida's novels for the sake of the Italian atmosphere.
(They preferred those about peasant life, because of the descriptions
of scenery and the pleasanter sentiments, though in general they liked
novels about people in society, whose motives and habits were more
comprehensible, spoke severely of Dickens, who "had never drawn a
gentleman," and considered Thackeray less at home in the great world
than Bulwer--who, however, was beginning to be thought old-fashioned.)
Mrs. and Miss Archer were both great lovers of scenery. It was what
they principally sought and admired on their occasional travels abroad;
considering architecture and painting as subjects for men, and chiefly
for learned persons who read Ruskin. Mrs. Archer had been born a
Newland, and mother and daughter, who were as like as sisters, were
both, as people said, "true Newlands"; tall, pale, and slightly
round-shouldered, with long noses, sweet smiles and a kind of drooping
distinction like that in certain faded Reynolds portraits. Their
physical resemblance would have been complete if an elderly embonpoint
had not stretched Mrs. Archer's black brocade, while Miss Archer's
brown and purple poplins hung, as the years went on, more and more
slackly on her virgin frame.

Mentally, the likeness between them, as Newland was aware, was less
complete than their identical mannerisms often made it appear. The
long habit of living together in mutually dependent intimacy had given
them the same vocabulary, and the same habit of beginning their phrases
"Mother thinks" or "Janey thinks," according as one or the other wished
to advance an opinion of her own; but in reality, while Mrs. Archer's
serene unimaginativeness rested easily in the accepted and familiar,
Janey was subject to starts and aberrations of fancy welling up from
springs of suppressed romance.

Mother and daughter adored each other and revered their son and
brother; and Archer loved them with a tenderness made compunctious and
uncritical by the sense of their exaggerated admiration, and by his
secret satisfaction in it. After all, he thought it a good thing for a
man to have his authority respected in his own house, even if his sense
of humour sometimes made him question