Force she absolutely forbade; and of
the intrinsic allurements of literature and knowledge she had no
conception.

Emily, as she grew up, displayed an uncommon degree of sensibility,
which under her circumstances would have been a source of perpetual
dissatisfaction, had it not been qualified with an extreme sweetness and
easiness of temper. She was far from being entitled to the appellation
of a beauty. Her person was _petite_ and trivial; her complexion
savoured of the _brunette_; and her face was marked with the small-pox,
sufficiently to destroy its evenness and polish, though not enough to
destroy its expression. But, though her appearance was not beautiful, it
did not fail to be in a high degree engaging. Her complexion was at once
healthful and delicate; her long dark eye-brows adapted themselves with
facility to the various conceptions of her mind; and her looks bore the
united impression of an active discernment and a good-humoured
frankness. The instruction she had received, as it was entirely of a
casual nature, exempted her from the evils of untutored ignorance, but
not from a sort of native wildness, arguing a mind incapable of guile
itself, or of suspecting it in others. She amused, without seeming
conscious of the refined sense which her observations contained; or
rather, having never been debauched with applause, she set light by her
own qualifications, and talked from the pure gaiety of a youthful heart
acting upon the stores of a just understanding, and not with any
expectation of being distinguished and admired.

The death of her aunt made very little change in her situation. This
prudent lady, who would have thought it little less than sacrilege to
have considered Miss Melville as a branch of the stock of the Tyrrels,
took no more notice of her in her will than barely putting her down for
one hundred pounds in a catalogue of legacies to her servants. She had
never been admitted into the intimacy and confidence of Mrs. Tyrrel; and
the young squire, now that she was left under his sole protection,
seemed inclined to treat her with even more liberality than his mother
had done. He had seen her grow up under his eye, and therefore, though
there were but six years difference in their ages, he felt a kind of
paternal interest in her welfare. Habit had rendered her in a manner
necessary to him, and, in every recess from the occupations of the field
and the pleasures of the table, he found himself solitary