for means of damaging
his own cause, he could scarcely have found anything better calculated
for that purpose than these last paragraphs. They took away much of
that desire to spare, to make unpleasantness as little unpleasant as may
be, which generally accompanies a refusal. His sententiousness was
unbearable. What right had he to advise before he knew whether she
would listen to him? What were these dangers to which she was even now
exposed, and from which Mr Westray was to shield her? She asked
herself the question formally, though she knew the answer all the while.
Her own heart had told her enough of late, to remove all difficulty in
reading between Mr Westray's lines. A jealous man is, if possible,
more contemptible than a jealous woman. Man's greater strength
postulates a broader mind and wider outlook; and if he fail in these,
his failure is more conspicuous than woman's. Anastasia had traced to
jealousy the origin of Westray's enigmatic remarks; but if she was
strong enough to hold him ridiculous for his pains, she was also weak
enough to take a woman's pleasure in having excited the interest of the
man she ridiculed.

She laughed again at the proposal that she should join him in
deciphering any riddles, still more such as were undecipherable; and the
air of patronage involved in his anxiety to provide for her future was
the more distasteful in that she had great ideas of providing for it
herself. She had told herself a hundred times that it was only
affection for her aunt that kept her at home. Were "anything to happen"
to Miss Joliffe, she would at once seek her own living. She had often
reckoned up the accomplishments which would aid her in such an
endeavour. She had received her education--even if it were somewhat
desultory and discontinuous--at good schools. She had always been a
voracious reader, and possessed an extensive knowledge of English
literature, particularly of the masters of fiction; she could play the
piano and the violin tolerably, though Mr Sharnall would have qualified
her estimate. She had an easy touch in oils and water-colour, which her
father said she must have inherited from his mother--from that Sophia
Joliffe who painted the great picture of the flowers and caterpillar,
and her spirited caricatures had afforded much merriment to her
schoolfellows. She made her own clothes, and was sure that she had a
taste in matters of dress design and manufacture that would bring he