"Lady Latimer has a great hold on Elizabeth's imagination. It would be a
good thing if she were to pay a visit to Hartwell; she might give her
young devotee some valuable instructions. Elizabeth is prejudiced
against me, and does not fall into her new condition so happily as I was
led to anticipate that she might."

"She will wear to it. My sister Mary has an art of taming, and will
help her. I prefer her indifference to an undue elation: that would
argue a commonness of mind from which I imagine her to be quite free."

"She has her own way of estimating us, and treats the state and luxury
of Abbotsmead as quite external to her. In her private thoughts, I fear,
she treats them as cumbrous lendings that she will throw off after a
season, and be gladly quit of their burden."

"Better so than in the other extreme. A girl of heart and mind cannot be
expected to identify herself suddenly with the customs of a strange
rank. She was early trained in the habits of a simple household, but
from what I see there can have been nothing wanting of essential
refinement in Mrs. Carnegie. There is a crudeness in Miss Fairfax
yet--she is very young--but she will ripen sound and sweet to the core,
or I am much mistaken in the quality of the green fruit."

The squire replied that he had no reason to believe his granddaughter
was otherwise than a good girl. And with that they left discussing her
and fell upon the election. Mr. Cecil Burleigh had a good courage for
the encounter, but he also had received intimations not to make too sure
of his success. The Fairfax influence had been so long in abeyance, so
long only a name in Norminster, that Mr. John Short began to quake the
moment he began to test it. Once upon a time Norminster had returned a
Fairfax as a matter of course, but for a generation its tendencies had
been more and more towards Liberalism, and at the last election it had
returned its old Whig member at the head of the poll, and in lieu of its
old Tory member a native lawyer, one Bradley, who professed Radicalism
on the hustings, but pruned his opinions in the House to the useful
working pattern of a supporter of the ministry. This prudent gentleman
was considered by a majority of his constituents not to have played
fair, and it was as against him, traitor and turncoat, that the old
Tories and moderate Conservatives were going to try to bring in Mr.
Cecil Burleigh. Both sides were prepared to spend money, and Norminster
w