Those who knew her well, and had become attached to her, were apt to endow her with all virtues, and to give her credit for a loveliness which strangers did not find on her face.

But as we do not light up our houses with our brightest lamps for all comers, so neither did she emit from her eyes their brightest sparks till special occasion for such shining had arisen.

To those who were allowed to love her no woman was more lovable.

There was innate in her an appreciation of her own position as a woman, and with it a principle of self-denial as a human being, which it was beyond the power of any Mrs.Roby to destroy or even to defile by small stains.
Like other girls she had been taught to presume that it was her destiny to be married, and like other girls she had thought much about her destiny.

A young man generally regards it as his destiny either to succeed or to fail in the world, and he thinks about that.
To him marriage, when it comes, is an accident to which he has hardly as yet given a thought.