That is one reason
why I did not like the pictures here, dear uncle--which you think me
stupid about. I used to come from the village with all that dirt and
coarse ugliness like a pain within me, and the simpering pictures in
the drawing-room seemed to me like a wicked attempt to find delight in
what is false, while we don't mind how hard the truth is for the
neighbors outside our walls. I think we have no right to come forward
and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils
which lie under our own hands."

Dorothea had gathered emotion as she went on, and had forgotten
everything except the relief of pouring forth her feelings, unchecked:
an experience once habitual with her, but hardly ever present since her
marriage, which had been a perpetual struggle of energy with fear. For
the moment, Will's admiration was accompanied with a chilling sense of
remoteness. A man is seldom ashamed of feeling that he cannot love a
woman so well when he sees a certain greatness in her: nature having
intended greatness for men. But nature has sometimes made sad
oversights in carrying out her intention; as in the case of good Mr.
Brooke, whose masculine consciousness was at this moment in rather a
stammering condition under the eloquence of his niece. He could not
immediately find any other mode of expressing himself than that of
rising, fixing his eye-glass, and fingering the papers before him. At
last he said--

"There is something in what you say, my dear, something in what you
say--but not everything--eh, Ladislaw? You and I don't like our
pictures and statues being found fault with. Young ladies are a little
ardent, you know--a little one-sided, my dear. Fine art, poetry, that
kind of thing, elevates a nation--emollit mores--you understand a
little Latin now. But--eh? what?"

These interrogatives were addressed to the footman who had come in to
say that the keeper had found one of Dagley's boys with a leveret in
his hand just killed.

"I'll come, I'll come. I shall let him off easily, you know," said Mr.
Brooke aside to Dorothea, shuffling away very cheerfully.

"I hope you feel how right this change is that I--that Sir James wishes
for," said Dorothea to Will, as soon as her uncle was gone.

"I do, now I have heard you speak about it. I shall not forget what
you have said. But can you think of something else at this moment? I
may not have another opportunity of speaking to you about w