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‘She is my husband’s daughter,’ said Mrs. Hayward, without moving a muscle. She remained unaffected by her companion’s enthusiasm. She recognised it as part of the burden laid upon her that she should have to receive the outflowings of a rapture in which she had no share.

‘And what did Joyce say?’ asked the lady of Bellendean. ‘And poor old Janet! oh, it will not be good news to her. But what did Joyce say? I should like to have been there; and why, why did you not bring her up to the house with you? But I see,—oh yes, it was better, it was kinder to leave her a little with the old people. The poor old people, God help them! Oh, Mrs. Hayward, there is no unmixed good in this world. It will kill old Janet and her old husband. There’s no unmixed good.’

‘No,’ said Mrs. Hayward quietly. She sat like a little figure of stone, nothing moving in her, not a finger, not an eyelash,—nothing but the foot, still beating now and then a sort of broken measure upon the floor.

Mrs. Bellendean sat down again when she had exhausted her first excitement. There is nothing that chills one’s warmest feelings like the presence of a spectator who does not share one’s satisfaction. Mrs. Hayward would have been that proverbial wet blanket, if there had not been in the very stiffness of her spectator-ship signs of another and still more potent excitement of her own. Strong self-repression at the end comes to affect us more than any demonstration. Mrs. Bellendean was very quick, and perhaps felt it sooner than a less vivid intelligence might have done. She sat down, almost apologetically, and looked at her guest.