Page:Shirley (1849 Volume 2).djvu/300

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288
SHIRLEY.

anything for it willingly, if it were delivered over entirely to my care—if it were quite dependent on me."

"You feel! Yes! yes! I daresay, now: you are led a great deal by your feelings, and you think yourself a very sensitive, refined personage, no doubt. Are you aware that, with all these romantic ideas, you have managed to train your features into an habitually lackadaisical expression, better suited to a novel-heroine than to a woman who is to make her way in the real world, by dint of common sense?"

"No; I am not at all aware of that, Mrs. Yorke."

"Look in the glass just behind you. Compare the face you see there with that of any early-rising, hard-working milkmaid."

"My face is a pale one, but it is not sentimental, and most milkmaids, however red and robust they may be, are more stupid and less practically fitted to make their way in the world than I am. I think more and more correctly than milkmaids in general do; consequently, where they would often, for want of reflection, act weakly, I, by dint of reflection, should act judiciously."

"Oh, no! you would be influenced by your feelings. You would be guided by impulse."

"Of course, I should often be influenced by my feelings: they were given me to that end. Whom