thy, to see everything as Godfrey saw it--there came a renewal of
self-questioning. _Had_ she done everything in her power to lighten
Godfrey's privation? Had she really been right in the resistance which
had cost her so much pain six years ago, and again four years ago--the
resistance to her husband's wish that they should adopt a child?
Adoption was more remote from the ideas and habits of that time than of
our own; still Nancy had her opinion on it. It was as necessary to her
mind to have an opinion on all topics, not exclusively masculine, that
had come under her notice, as for her to have a precisely marked place
for every article of her personal property: and her opinions were
always principles to be unwaveringly acted on. They were firm, not
because of their basis, but because she held them with a tenacity
inseparable from her mental action. On all the duties and proprieties
of life, from filial behaviour to the arrangements of the evening
toilette, pretty Nancy Lammeter, by the time she was three-and-twenty,
had her unalterable little code, and had formed every one of her habits
in strict accordance with that code. She carried these decided
judgments within her in the most unobtrusive way: they rooted
themselves in her mind, and grew there as quietly as grass. Years ago,
we know, she insisted on dressing like Priscilla, because "it was right
for sisters to dress alike", and because "she would do what was right
if she wore a gown dyed with cheese-colouring". That was a trivial but
typical instance of the mode in which Nancy's life was regulated.

It was one of those rigid principles, and no petty egoistic feeling,
which had been the ground of Nancy's difficult resistance to her
husband's wish. To adopt a child, because children of your own had
been denied you, was to try and choose your lot in spite of Providence:
the adopted child, she was convinced, would never turn out well, and
would be a curse to those who had wilfully and rebelliously sought what
it was clear that, for some high reason, they were better without.
When you saw a thing was not meant to be, said Nancy, it was a bounden
duty to leave off so much as wishing for it. And so far, perhaps, the
wisest of men could scarcely make more than a verbal improvement in her
principle. But the conditions under which she held it apparent that a
thing was not meant to be, depended on a more peculiar mode of
thinking. She would have given up making a pu