se for meanings. That, with the whole situation,
made delicacy of the first importance; as indeed what was perhaps most
striking in the entire connection was the part played by delicacy from
the first. It had all been a drama of the delicate: the consummately
scrupulous and successful administration of his resources for the
benefit of his virtue, so that they could be handed over, in the event,
without the leakage of a fraction, what was that but a triumph of
delicacy? So delicacy conspired, delicacy surrounded him; the case
having been from the early time that, could he only be regarded as
sufficiently responsible, could the sources of his bounty be judged
fairly open to light pressure (there was question of none but the
lightest) that bounty might blessedly flow. This had been Miss
Trotwood's own enlightened view, on behalf of one of the oddest and most
appealing collections of wistful wondering single gentlewomen that a
great calculating benevolence perhaps ever found arrayed before
it--ornaments these all of the second and third cousinship and
interested spectators of the almost inexpressible facts.

I should have liked completely to express them, in spite of the
difficulty--if not indeed just by reason of that; the difficulty of
their consisting so much more of "character" than of "incident" (heaven
save the artless opposition!) though this last element figured bravely
enough too, thanks to some of the forms taken by our young Albert's wild
wilfulness. He was so weak--after the most approved fashion of
distressing young men of means--that his successive exhibitions of it
had a fine high positive effect, such as would have served beautifully,
act after act, for the descent of the curtain. The issue, however
(differing in this from the common theatrical trick) depended less on
who should die than on who should live; the younger of cousin Helen's
pair of wards--putting them even only as vessels of her attempted
earnestness--had violently broken away, but a remedy to this grief, for
reasons too many to tell, dwelt in the possible duration, could it only
not be arrested, of two other lives, one of these her own, the second
the guileless Henry's. The single gentlewomen, to a remarkable number,
whom she regarded and treated as nieces, though they were only daughters
of cousins, were such objects of her tender solicitude that, she and
Henry and Albert being alike childless, the delightful thing to think of
was, on certain