Lucretia heard in silence: neither eye nor lip betrayed emotion; but her colour went and came.

This was the only sign that she was moved: moved, but how?
Fielden's experience in the human heart could not guess.

When he had done, she went quietly to her desk (it was in her own room that the conference took place), she unlocked it with a deliberate hand, she took from it a pocketbook and a case of jewels which Sir Miles had given her on her last birthday.

"Let my sister have these; while I live she shall not want!" "My dear young lady, it is not these things that she asks from you,--it is your affection, your sisterly heart, your intercession with her natural protector; these, in her name, I ask for,--'non gemmis, neque purpura venale, nec auro!'" Lucretia then, still without apparent emotion, raised to the good man's face deep, penetrating, but unrevealing eyes, and said slowly,-- "Is my sister like my mother, who, they say, was handsome ?" Much startled by this question, Fielden answered: "I never saw your mother, my dear; but your sister gives promise of more than common comeliness." Lucretia's brows grew slightly compressed.

"And her education has been, of course, neglected ?" "Certainly, in some points,--mathematics, for instance, and theology; but she knows what ladies generally know,--French and Italian, and such like.