Father, I care nothing at all for any face which
has nothing beneath the outside. It's a barren prospect to me,
however fair the outside may be -- I don't care to let my eye
dwell on it."

"How do you like the prospect of your own, in the glass?"

"I should be very sorry if I didn't think it had infinitely
more in it than the face we have been speaking of. It is not
so beautifully tinted, nor so regularly cut; but _I_ like it
better."

"I am afraid few people will agree with you," said her father
dryly.

"There's one thing," said Elizabeth, -- "I sha'n't know it if
they don't. But then I see my face at a disadvantage, looking
stupidly at itself in the glass -- I hope it does better to
other people."

"I didn't know you thought quite so much of yourself," said
Mr. Haye.

"I haven't told you the half," said Elizabeth, looking at him.
"I am afraid I think more of myself than anybody else does, or
ever will."

"If you do it so well for yourself, I'm afraid other people
won't save you the trouble," said her father.

"I'm afraid _you_ will not, by the tone in which you speak,
father."

"What has set you against Rose?"

"Nothing in the world! I am not set against her. Nothing in
the world but her own emptiness and impossibility of being
anything like a companion to me."

"Elizabeth! --"

"Father! -- What's the matter?"

"How dare you talk in that manner?"

"Why father," said Elizabeth, her tone somewhat quieting as
his was roused, -- "I never saw the thing yet I didn't dare
say, if I thought it. Why shouldn't I?"

"Because it is not true -- a word of it."

"I'm sure I wish it wasn't true," said Elizabeth. "What I said
was true. It's a sorrowful truth to me, too, for I haven't a
soul to talk to that can understand me -- not even you, father,
it seems."

"I wish I didn't understand you," said Mr. Haye.

"It's nothing very dreadful to understand," said Elizabeth, --
"what I have been saying now. I wonder how you can think so
much of it. I know you love Rose better than I do."

"I love her so well --" said Mr. Haye, and stopped.

"So well that what?"

"That I can hardly talk to you with temper."

"Then don't let us talk about it at all," said Elizabeth,
whose own heightened colour shewed that her temper was moving.

"Unhappily it is necessary," said Mr. Haye dryly.

"Why in the world is it necessary? You can't alter the matter,
father, by talking; -- it must stand so."

"Stand how?"

"Why,