She bore always in mind a sentence her husband had once quoted--and, though a clergyman, he did not often quote the Bible, he only lived it: "As much as in you lieth, live peaceably with all men." But she sometimes wondered, with a kind of sad satire, whether the same could ever, under any circumstances, be done with all women.
Alas! not with these, or rather this woman, Aunt Maria being merely the adjective of that very determined substantive, Aunt Henrietta.

She braced herself to the battle immediately.
"Excuse me, Mrs.Grey; but I cannot see what right you have to question me, or I to answer.

Am I not capable of the management of my own sister's children, who have been under my care ever since she died, and in whom I never supposed you would take the slightest interest ?" This after her charge of Arthur--when she had nursed the child back to life again, and knew that he still depended upon her for everything in life! But, knowing it was so, the secret truth was enough to sustain her under any heap of falsehoods--opposing falsehoods, too, directly contradicting one another; but Miss Gascoigne never paused to consider that.

Lax-tongued people seldom do.
"I will not question the point of my interest in the children.

If I can not prove it in other ways than words, the latter would be very useless.