Her youth was already gone, for her beauty had been of the fragile kind that breaks early, and her wan, aristocratic features had settled into the downward droop which comes to the faces of people who habitually "expect the worst." "I know, Jane, I know," murmured Mrs.Carr, dropping her thimble as she nervously tried to hasten her sewing.

"But don't you think it would be a comfort, dear, to have the advice of a man about Charley?
Won't you let me send Marthy for your Cousin Jimmy Wrenn ?" "Oh, mother, I couldn't.

It would kill me to have everybody know I'm unhappy!" wailed Jane, breaking down.
"But everybody knows anyway, Jane," said Gabriella, sticking the point of her scissors into a strip of buckram, for she was stiffening the bottom of the skirt after the fashion of the middle 'nineties.
"Of course I'm foolishly sensitive," returned Jane, while she lifted the baby from her lap and placed him in a pile of cushions by the deep arm of the sofa, where he sat imperturbably gazing at the blue sky and the red wall from which the sparrow had flown.

"You can never understand my feelings because you are so different." "Gabriella is not married," observed Mrs.Carr, with sentimental finality.

"But I'm sure, Jane--I'm just as sure as I can be of anything that it wouldn't do a bit of harm to speak to Cousin Jimmy Wrenn.