same reason. They
both had an established ideal of their personal qualities, not far above
the positive, since they were neither of them pretentious, yet it was a
trifle higher and fairer than the working pattern; and albeit they were
sincere enough, quite sincere in their mutual intercourse, they had,
by what each knew at times of the thumping organ within them, cause for
doubting that they were as transparent as the other supposed; and
they were separately aware of an inward smile at one another's partial
deception; which did not thwart their honest power of working up to the
respected ideal. The stroke of the deeper self-knowledge rarely shook
them; they were able to live with full sensations in the animated
picture they were to the eyes best loved by them. This in fact was
their life. Anything beside it was a dream, and we do not speak of
our dreams--not of every dream. Especially do we reserve our speech
concerning the dream in which we had a revelation of the proud frame
deprived of a guiding will, flung rudderless on the waves. Ah that
abject! The dismantled ship has the grandeur of the tempest about it,
but the soul swayed by passion is ignominiously bare-poled, detected,
hooted by its old assumption. If instinct plays fantastical tricks when
we are sleeping, let it be ever behind a curtain. We can be held
guilty only if we court exposure. The ideal of English gentleman and
gentlewoman is closely Roman in the self-repression it exacts, and that
it should be but occasionally difficult to them shows an affinity with
the type. Do you perchance, O continental observers of the race, call it
hypocritical? It is their nature disciplined to the regimental step of
civilisation. Socially these island men and women of a certain middle
rank are veterans of an army, and some of the latest enrolled are the
stoutest defenders of the flag.

Brother and sister preserved their little secrets of character apart.
They could not be expected to unfold what they declined personally to
examine. But they were not so successful with the lady governing the
household, their widowed maternal aunt, Mrs. Lackstraw, a woman
of decisive penetration, and an insubordinate recruit of the army
aforesaid. To her they were without a mask; John was passion's slave,
Jane the most romantic of Eve's daughters. She pointed to incidents of
their youth; her vision was acutely retrospective. The wealth of her
nephew and niece caused such a view of them to be