the bones of a noble woman under her pedantry and
affectation; she was a peg above Dulcie in station, and a vast deal
before her in the world's estimation. She was indeed "a fortune;" and
you err egregiously if you suppose a fortune was not properly valued a
hundred years ago. Men went mad for fair faces and glib tongues, but
solidly and sensibly married fortunes, according to all the old
news-prints. But Clarissa was also a beauty, far more of a regular
beauty than Dulcie, with one of those inconceivably dazzling complexions
that blush on like a June rose to old age, and a stately height and
presence for her years. She had dark brown curls of the deep brown of
mountain waters, with the ripple of the same, hanging down in a wreath
of tendrils on the bend of the neck behind. With all her gifts, Mistress
Clary had the crowning bounty which does not always accompany so many
inferior endowments: she had sense under her airs, and she was good
enough to like Dulcie instinctively, and to think how nice it would be
to have Dulcie with her and Mistress Cambridge in their formal brick
house, with the stone coping and balcony, at Redwater. Besides, (credit
to her womanhood,) Clarissa did reflect what a fine thing it would be
for Dulcie Cowper getting up in years, really getting up in years,
however young in spirit, to have the variety, and the additional chance
of establishing herself in life. Certainly, Redwater was a town of more
consideration than Fairfax, and had its occasional assemblies and
performances of strolling players; and Clarissa, in right of her
father's family, visited the vicar and the squire, and could carry
Dulcie along with her, since the child's manners were quite genteel, and
her clothes perfectly presentable.

It was a harmonious arrangement, in which not only Clarissa but Mistress
Cambridge agreed. Cambridge was one of those worthy, useful persons,
whom nobody in those strangely plain but decidedly aristocratic
days--not even Clarissa and Dulcie, though they sat with her, ate with
her, hugged her when they wanted to coax her--ever thought or spoke of
otherwise than "Cambridge, a good sort of woman in her own way." The
only temporary drawback to the contentment of the party was the shower
of tears which fell at Dulcie's forcible separation from her relatives.
It was forcible in the end; all the blessings had been given in the
house--don't sneer, they did her no harm, no harm, but a vast deal of
good--and onl