No doubt, if little Patty had been more highly educated, more refined, and had no more engrossing occupations than reading and paying visits, she too would have worn a Mariana-like aspect, and sighed more frequently. But though she often wept in secret, hers was so busy a life that she had but little time to mourn, and though she sighed to herself, and suffered too most keenly, her cheeks somehow would not grow pale or less sound, and the sorrow was hidden away deeply in her heart. Mrs Jared knew a great deal, and kept finding out more and more; but the subject was tabooed, and though her tender heart yearned to condole with Patty and try to comfort her, yet long talks with Jared had schooled her to be silent, and poor Patty had no comforter save Janet, and even with her she refrained from fully opening her heart. "Poor girl! I know she feels it keenly," said Mrs Jared to her husband on one occasion. "Not she," said Jared. "It must be nearly forgotten by this time." "Did I forget you, years ago?" said Mrs Jared, severely. "Too good a memory, my dear," said Jared, smiling. "Then don't talk such nonsense," said his wife. "What ideas you men do have of women's hearts, just because now and then you meet with some silly, flighty, coquettish thing, not without a heart, certainly, but with one that is worthless. Do you suppose that all girls' hearts are counterfeit coin?" "Not I!" said Jared; "but it won't do. It is just as I thought at the time, and it always is the case with those red-hot sanguine fellows. All very well at first, but they cool down gradually, and then it's all over. You see we hear nothing at all of him now." "I'm afraid he's ill," said Mrs Jared; "there must be something wrong." "Wrong! well, yes, I suppose so," said Jared; "if it's wrong to get rich, it was wrong of him to talk to our poor girl in the way he did; and it's wrong of her to dream of it, if she still does, and it was wrong of you to expect that anything would ever come of it but sorrow, and it was wrong--" "Wrong of you to go on talking in that way," said Mrs Jared, impetuously; "and, for my part, I don't believe that it is as you say. There's some misfortune or something happened to him, or--" "Don't, for goodness' sake, talk in that way to her," said Jared, "or you'll complete the mischief. It's as well as it is, and the sooner she forgets it all, the better. Nothing could ever have come of it, and I should never have given my consent, even if he had kept to his professed determination. Richard would always have been against it; and, goodness knows, there's estrangement enough between us without our doing anything to increase the distance. Look at us: poor people, with poor-people friends,--old Purkis and Tim Ruggles, and those aristocrats in Decadia; and then look at Richard and his--" "Richard's a selfish--"