ly come to entertain a
profound respect for his brother's widow. The widow had acknowledged
to herself the truth of the affection shown by the uncle to her
daughters. But yet they had never come together as friends. Of her
own money matters Mrs Dale had never spoken a word to the squire. Of
his intention respecting the girls the squire had never spoken a word
to the mother. And in this way they had lived and were living at
Allington.

The life which Mrs Dale led was not altogether an easy life,--was not
devoid of much painful effort on her part. The theory of her life
one may say was this--that she should bury herself in order that
her daughters might live well above ground. And in order to carry
out this theory, it was necessary that she should abstain from all
complaint or show of uneasiness before her girls. Their life above
ground would not be well if they understood that their mother, in
this underground life of hers, was enduring any sacrifice on their
behalf. It was needful that they should think that the picking of
peas in a sun-bonnet, or long readings by her own fire-side, and
solitary hours spent in thinking, were specially to her mind. "Mamma
doesn't like going out." "I don't think mamma is happy anywhere out
of her own drawing-room." I do not say that the girls were taught to
say such words, but they were taught to have thoughts which led to
such words, and in the early days of their going out into the world
used so to speak of their mother. But a time came to them before
long,--to one first and then to the other, in which they knew that
it was not so, and knew also all that their mother had suffered for
their sakes.

And in truth Mrs Dale could have been as young in heart as they
were. She, too, could have played croquet, and have coquetted with
a haymaker's rake, and have delighted in her pony, ay, and have
listened to little nothings from this and that Apollo, had she
thought that things had been conformable thereto. Women at forty do
not become ancient misanthropes, or stern Rhadamanthine moralists,
indifferent to the world's pleasures--no, not even though they be
widows. There are those who think that such should be the phase of
their minds. I profess that I do not so think. I would have women,
and men also, young as long as they can be young. It is not that a
woman should call herself in years younger than her father's family
Bible will have her to be. Let her who is forty call herself forty;
but