"All sense of justice is lost in that world of vanity
and self-love. You are as near akin to the Marquise as your sister; and
yet, because she was familiar with the one and not with the other--and
because her vain, foolish soul took pleasure in a beauty that recalled her
own perishable charms, she leaves one sister a great fortune and the other
a pittance!"
"Dear aunt, I am more than content----"
"But I am not content for you, Angela. Had the estate been divided equally
you might have taken the veil, and succeeded to my place in this beloved
house, which needs the accession of wealth to maintain it in usefulness and
dignity."
Angela would not wound her aunt's feelings by one word of disparagement of
the house in which she had been reared; but, looking along the dim avenue
of the future, she yearned for some wider horizon than the sky, barred with
tall poplars which rose high above the garden wall that formed the limit of
her daily walks. Her rambles, her recreations, had all been confined within
that space of seven or eight acres, and she thought sometimes with a sudden
longing of those hills and valleys of fertile Buckinghamshire, which lay so
far back in the dawn of her mind, and were yet so distinctly pictured in
her memory.
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