shfield 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?"

The ladies were at a dead-lock, and that the heart is the father of our
histories, I am led to think when I look abroad on families stagnant
because of so weak a motion of the heart. There are those who have none
at all; the mass of us are moved from the propulsion of the toes of the
Fates. But the ladies of Brookfield had hearts lively enough to get them
into scrapes. The getting out of them, or getting on at all, was left to
Providence. They were at a dead-lock, for Arabella, flattered as she was
by Freshfield Sumner's wooing, could not openly throw Edward over, whom
indeed she thought that she liked the better of the two, though