egree. 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 listed all the world
over. Amiable giggling Forey girls called Clare, The Betrothed. Dark
man, or fair? was mooted. Adrian threw off the first strophe of Clare's
fortune in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating gipsy twang. Her aunt
Forey warned her to have her dresses in readiness. Her grandpapa Forey
pretended to grumble at bridal presents being expected from grandpapas.

This one smelt orange-flower, another spoke solemnly of an old shoe.
The finding of a wedding-ring was celebrated through all the palpitating
accessories and rosy ceremonies involved by that famous instrument. In
the midst of the general hilarity, Clare showed her deplorable want of
iron by bursting into tears.

Did the poor mocked-at heart divi