opposite, while she breathed the freshness, enjoying the mere motion, and the vague variety as she heard it noticed, on pure trust, pleased at what pleased the others—it was not like England, indeed, but how pure and exhilarating seemed the French air—its sun gave a still sleepier stillness to her mild eyes, yet with so healthy a tint and soft fulness of person, that the holding of her parasol, in Lady Willoughby, the trouble she took to observe an object, were pleasant to see; as Mr Thorpe, riding by, devoted his conversation to the governess and her; the while Charles, still in a discontented mood, vented it on the whole country, and leaning across to his sister, one elbow on his knee, kept up his side-current of livelier talk. For one thing, their constant popularity displeased him, however acceptable to Rose. That national sharpness and curiosity had all at once become particularly disagreeable to the youth, in his grumbling humour; and it mingled through the whole thread of his discourse, not without some acute notions of the people’s character, on which he appeared to have been oddly brooding. Nor the less was his zest in showing that France and England were natural foes, because his tutor on the other side rode discoursing benevolently to the reverse effect; while Mrs Mason responded, in all that propriety of sentiment, which was blended, in her dialogue to gentlemen, with a slight shade of delicate reserve. But really there was a domineering style of argument in Charles, if one ventured to express a different view, that provoked his sister in the end—especially as he was a year younger; she turned her shoulder to him, and sat resolutely looking the other way, as if absorbed in the mild commonplaces of Mr Thorpe, and Mrs Mason’s weary platitudes, which diffused such additional complacency over her mother. After all, they _were_ tiresome things, such as all good books and worthy people said over and over; though Charles had no right to look down on his tutor with such secret contempt, because he knew nothing of what Charles called “life”—or to hint, because he looked serious, that his mind had got bewildered among triangles ever since he studied so terribly for a degree, leaving out nothing but his memory: perhaps, indeed, it _might_ be true that Mrs Mason, in spite of her early loss of some inestimable kind, had a sort of soft regard for him, and paid him little attentions, especially at table, with the sugar,—though moderately, till the curacy at Stoke should be sure; but what she would not for a moment be so disrespectful to Mr Thorpe as to credit, was that a hopeless love, never to be revealed, consumed him, amidst all his learning, for—for herself. Her indignation mounted at the thought,—for a moment even at the excellent tutor, so highly respected by Sir Godfrey, with his thin hair already leaving his forehead bald, through long delay of any preferment—whose sister was his only relative alive, and was to