his
letters had not so wide an intellectual range. Her father was irritably
anxious that she should close with Edward. Adela could not move:
at least, not openly. Cornelia might have taken an initiative; but
tenderness for her father's health had hitherto restrained her, and she
temporized with Sir Twickenham on the noblest of principles. She was, by
the devotion of her conduct, enabled to excuse herself so far that she
could even fish up an excuse in the shape of the effort she had made to
find him entertaining: as if the said effort should really be re-payment
enough to him for his assiduous and most futile suit. One deep grief
sat on Cornelia's mind. She had heard from Lady Gosstre that there was
something like madness in the Barrett family. She had consented to meet
Sir Purcell clandestinely (after debate on his claim to such a sacrifice
on her part), and if, on those occasions, her lover's tone was raised,
it gave her a tremour. And he had of late appeared to lose his noble
calm; he had spoken (it might almost be interpreted) as if he doubted
her. Once, when she had mentioned her care for her father, he had cried
out upon the name of father with violence, looking unlike himself.

His condemnation of the world, too, was not so Christian as it had been;
it betrayed what the vulgar would call spite, and was not all compassed
in his peculiar smooth shrug--expressive of a sort of border-land
between contempt and charity: which had made him wear in her sight all
the superiority which the former implies, with a considerable share
of the benign complacency of the latter. This had gone. He had been
sarcastic even to her; saying once, and harshly: "Have you a will?"
Personally she liked the poor organist better than the poor baronet,
though he had less merit. It was unpleasant in her present mood to be
told "that we have come into this life to fashion for ourselves souls;"
and that "whosoever cannot decide is a soulless wretch fit but to pass
into vapour." He appeared to have ceased to make his generous allowances
for difficult situations. A senseless notion struck Cornelia, that
with the baronetcy he had perhaps inherited some of the madness of his
father.

The two were in a dramatic tangle of the Nice Feelings worth a glance
as we pass on. She wished to say to him, "You are unjust to my
perplexities;" and he to her, "You fail in your dilemma through
cowardice." Instead of uttering which, they chid themselves severally
f