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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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manner in which what was haughty or impetuous in him was softened by age and sex, in her, to a gracious dignity. I thought, more than once, that it was well no serious cause of division had ever come between them; or two such natures - I ought rather to express it, two such shades of the same nature - might have been harder to reconcile than the two extremest opposites in creation. The idea did not originate in my own discernment, I am bound to confess, but in a speech of Rosa Dartle's. She said at dinner: 'Oh, but do tell me, though, somebody, because I have been thinking about it all day, and I want to know.' 'You want to know what, Rosa?' returned Mrs. Steerforth. 'Pray, pray, Rosa, do not be mysterious.' 'Mysterious!' she cried. 'Oh! really? Do you consider me so?' 'Do I constantly entreat you,' said Mrs. Steerforth, 'to speak plainly, in your own natural manner?' 'Oh! then this is not my natural manner?' she rejoined. 'Now you must really bear with me, because I ask for information. We never know ourselves.' 'It has become a second nature,' said Mrs. Steerforth, without any displeasure; 'but I remember, - and so must you, I think, - when your manner was different, Rosa; when it was not so guarded, and was more trustful.' 'I am sure you are right,' she returned; 'and so it is that bad habits grow upon one! Really? Less guarded and more trustful? How can I, imperceptibly, have changed, I wonder! Well, that's very odd! I must study to regain my former self.' 'I wish you would,' said Mrs. Steerforth, with a smile. 'Oh! I really will, you know!' she answered. 'I will learn frankness from - let me see - from James.' 'You cannot learn frankness, Rosa,' said Mrs. Steerforth quickly - for there was always some effect of sarcasm in what Rosa Dartle said, though it was said, as this was, in the most unconscious manner in the world - 'in a better school.' |
