wonder what I came into the world for. I long to have something absorbing and compulsory to fill my head and hands, and to occupy my thoughts."
"Can labour alone make a human being happy?"
"No; but it can give varieties of pain, and prevent us from breaking our hearts with a single tyrant master-torture. Besides, successful labour has its recompense; a vacant, weary, lonely, hopeless life has none."
"But hard labour and learned professions, they say, make women masculine, coarse, unwomanly."
"And what does it signify, whether unmarried and never-to-be-married women are unattractive and inelegant, or not?—provided only they are decent, decorous, and neat, it is enough. The utmost which ought to be required of old maids, in the way of appearance, is that they should not absolutely offend men's eyes as they pass them in the street; for the rest, they should be allowed, without too much scorn, to be as absorbed, grave, plain-looking, and plain-dressed as they please."
"You might be an old maid yourself, Caroline, you speak so earnestly."
"I shall be one: it is my destiny. I will never marry a Malone or a Sykes—and no one else will ever marry me."
Here fell a long pause: Shirley broke it. Again the name by which she seemed bewitched was almost the first on her lips.
"Lina—did not Moore call you Lina sometimes?"
