her on every variety of subject.

It was no little comfort to Ottilie when one day Charlotte took an
opportunity of making (she did it on purpose) the wise observation, "How
keenly grateful people were to us when we were able by stilling and
calming them to help them out of the entanglements of passion! Let us
set cheerfully to work," she said, "at what the men have left
incomplete: we shall be preparing the most charming surprise for them
when they return to us, and our temperate proceedings will have carried
through and executed what their impatient natures would have spoilt."

"Speaking of temperance, my dear aunt, I cannot help saying how I am
struck with the intemperance of men, particularly in respect of wine. It
has often pained and distressed me, when I have observed how, for hours
together, clearness of understanding, judgment, considerateness, and
whatever is most amiable about them, will be utterly gone, and instead
of the good which they might have done if they had been themselves, most
disagreeable things sometimes threaten. How often may not wrong, rash
determinations have arisen entirely from that one cause!"

Charlotte assented, but she did not go on with the subject. She saw only
too clearly that it was Edward of whom Ottilie was thinking. It was not
exactly habitual with him, but he allowed himself much more frequently
than was at all desirable to stimulate his enjoyment and his power of
talking and acting by such indulgence. If what Charlotte had just said
had set Ottilie thinking again about men, and particularly about Edward,
she was all the more struck and startled when her aunt began to speak of
the impending marriage of the Captain as of a thing quite settled and
acknowledged. This gave a totally different aspect to affairs from what
Edward had previously led her to entertain. It made her watch every
expression of Charlotte's, every hint, every action, every step. Ottilie
had become jealous, sharp-eyed, and suspicious, without knowing it.

Meanwhile, Charlotte with her clear glance looked through the whole
circumstances of their situation, and made arrangements which would
provide, among other advantages, full employment for Ottilie. She
contracted her household, not parsimoniously, but into narrower
dimensions; and, indeed, in one point of view, these moral aberrations
might be taken for a not unfortunate accident. For in the style in which
they had been going on, they had fallen imperceptibl