ur sisters, a nervous invalid mother, and an
absent-minded father, determined my status in early girlhood. I was to
show a respectful interest in the love-affairs of my sisters, who were
handsome and pretty and charming and attractive and _piquantes_, while I
was relatively plain and backward, besides having an outcrop on one
cheek which has since been successfully removed. I was not to presume
upon my position as a sister to express opinions about these said
love-affairs, because I was not supposed to know anything about such
matters. They were not in my department. My _role_ was a domestic one,
and I had a high moral standpoint; which I would gladly have dispensed
with, but the force of family tradition overpowered me. It has been a
poor consolation to me to carry about this standpoint like a campstool
to the houses of the friends I visit at intervals, now that my sisters
are all married, and my mother has departed this life, and my father has
married a Mrs. Dubosc, with whom I don't agree. I lead a life of
constant resentment against unattached mankind, who decide, after
critical inspection, that they won't, when I have really never asked
them to. You and I have been more companionable--more like keeping
company, as Lutwyche would say--than any man I ever came across, and I
should like to be able to say to you that, even as you never met with
Rosalind, even so I never met with Orlando, but without any phase of my
career to correspond with the one you so delicately hinted at just now,
in your own. For I fancied I read between your lines that your scheme of
life had not been precisely that of an anchorite. Pray understand that I
have never supposed it was so, and that I rather honour your attempt to
indicate the fact to me without outraging my maidenly--old maidish, if
you will--susceptibilities"?

It was because Miss Constance Dickenson, however improbable it may seem,
had wanted to say all this and a great deal more, and could not see her
way to any of it, that she had become dry and monosyllabic. It was
because of this compulsory silence that she felt that even her
brief:--"Why?" in answer to Mr. Pellew's suggestion that an Orlando must
have come on her stage though no Rosalind had come on his, struck her
after it had passed her lips as a false step.

He in his turn was at a loss to get something worded so as not to
overstep his familiarity-licence. Rough-hewn, it might have run
thus:--"Because no girl, as pretty a