f superstition, which had lasted the
longest--the time when it seemed to her, as at first, a kind of
profanity to doubt of Selina and judge her, the elder sister whose
beauty and success she had ever been proud of and who carried herself,
though with the most good-natured fraternisings, as one native to an
upper air. She had called herself in moments of early penitence for
irrepressible suspicion a little presumptuous prig: so strange did it
seem to her at first, the impulse of criticism in regard to her bright
protectress. But the revolution was over and she had a desolate, lonely
freedom which struck her as not the most cynical thing in the world only
because Selina's behaviour was more so. She supposed she should learn,
though she was afraid of the knowledge, what had passed between that
lady and her husband while her vigil ached itself away. But it appeared
to her the next day, to her surprise, that nothing was changed in the
situation save that Selina knew at present how much more she was
suspected. As this had not a chastening effect upon Mrs. Berrington
nothing had been gained by Laura's appeal to her. Whatever Lionel had
said to his wife he said nothing to Laura: he left her at perfect
liberty to forget the subject he had opened up to her so luminously.
This was very characteristic of his good-nature; it had come over him
that after all she wouldn't like it, and if the free use of the gray
ponies could make up to her for the shock she might order them every day
in the week and banish the unpleasant episode from her mind.

Laura ordered the gray ponies very often: she drove herself all over the
country. She visited not only the neighbouring but the distant poor, and
she never went out without stopping for one of the vicar's fresh
daughters. Mellows was now half the time full of visitors and when it
was not its master and mistress were staying with their friends either
together or singly. Sometimes (almost always when she was asked) Laura
Wing accompanied her sister and on two or three occasions she paid an
independent visit. Selina had often told her that she wished her to have
her own friends, so that the girl now felt a great desire to show her
that she had them. She had arrived at no decision whatever; she had
embraced in intention no particular course. She drifted on, shutting her
eyes, averting her head and, as it seemed to herself, hardening her
heart. This admission will doubtless suggest to the reader that