d if I were set against Uncle Oliver's
plans, and really hurt if she could not make him think as she did about
right and wrong, but otherwise she was always bright. She never found
people tiresome; she could find something kind to say to and for the
silliest; and when my uncle's display was most provoking, she would
only laugh at 'poor Oliver's' odd notions of doing her honour. I used
to be quite ashamed of the fuss I would make when I thought a thing
vulgar; when I saw that sort of vanity by the side of her real
indifference, springing from unworldliness.'

'And then her mornings were quiet?'

'More quiet than at home. While we were riding, she used to sit with
her dear old big Bible, and the two or three old books she was so fond
of. You remember her Sutton and her Bishop Home, and often she would
show me some passage that had struck her as prettier than ever, well as
she had always known it. Once she said she was very thankful for the
leisure time, free from household cares, and even from friendly gossip;
for she said first she had been gay, then she had been busy, and had
never had time to meditate quietly.'

'So she made a cloister of this grand house. Ah! I trusted she was
past being hurt by external things. That grand old age was like a pure
glad air where worldly fumes could not mount up. My only fear would
have been this unlucky estrangement making her unhappy.'

'I think I may tell you how she felt it,' said Clara; 'I am trying to
tell James, but I don't know whether I can. She said she had come to
perceive that she had confounded pride with independence. She blamed
herself, so that I could not bear to hear it, for the grand fine things
in her life. She said pride had made her stand alone, and unkindly
spurn much that was kindly meant. I don't mean that she repented of
the actions, but of the motives; she said the glory of being beholden
to no one had run through everything; and had been very hurtful even to
Uncle Oliver. She never let him know all her straits, and was too
proud, she said, to ask, when she was hurt at his not offering help,
and so she made him seem more hard-hearted, and let us become set
against him. She said she had fostered the same temper in poor Jem,
who had it strongly enough by inheritance, and that she had never known
the evil, nor understood it as pride, till she saw the effects.'

'Did they make her unhappy?'

'She cried when she spoke of it, and I have seen her i