'There's a difference between one susceptible of instruction, and anything so flippant and volatile as Bertha,' said Miss Fennimore, smiling. 'And poor Maria!' 'She is so good and kind! If she could only see a few things, and people, and learn to talk!' 'Silence and unobtrusiveness are the only useful lessons for her, poor girl!' then observing Phoebe's bewildered looks, 'My dear, I was forced to speak to Bertha because she was growing jealous of Maria's exemptions; but you, who have been constantly shielding and supplying her deficiencies, you do not tell me that you were not aware of them?' 'I always knew she was not clever,' said Phoebe, her looks of alarmed surprise puzzling Miss Fennimore, who in all her philosophy had never dreamt of the unconscious instinct of affection. 'I could not have thought it,' she said. 'Thought what? Pray tell me! O what is the matter with poor Maria?' 'Then, my dear, you really had never perceived that poor Maria is not--has not the usual amount of capacity--that she cannot be treated as otherwise than deficient.' 'Does mamma know it?' faintly asked Phoebe, tears slowly filling her eyes. Miss Fennimore paused, inwardly rating Mrs. Fulmort's powers little above those of her daughter. 'I am not sure,' she said; 'your sister Juliana certainly does, and in spite of the present pain, I believe it best that your eyes should be opened.' 'That I may take care of her.' 'Yes, you can do much in developing her faculties, as well as in sheltering her from being thrust into positions to which she would be unequal. You do so already. Though her weakness was apparent to me the first week I was in the house, yet, owing to your kind guardianship, I never perceived its extent till you were absent. I could not have imagined so much tact and vigilance could have been unconscious. Nay, dear child, it is no cause for tears. Her life may perhaps be happier than that of many of more complete intellect.' 'I ought not to cry,' owned Phoebe, the tears quietly flowing all the time. 'Such people cannot do wrong in the same way as we can.' 'Ah! Phoebe, till we come to the infinite, how shall the finite pronounce what is wrong?' Phoebe did not understand, but felt that she was not in Miss Charlecote's atmosphere, and from the heavenly, 'from him to whom little is given, little will be required,' came to the earthly, and said, imploring, 'And you will never be hard on her again!' 'I trust I have not been hard on her. I shall task her less, and only endeavour to give her habits of quiet occupation, and make her manners retiring. It was this relaxation of discipline, together with Bertha's sad habit of teasing, which was intolerable in your absence, that induced me to explain to her the state of the case.' 'How shocked she must have been.' 'Not quite as you were. Her first remark was that it was as if she were next in age to you.' 'She is not old enough to understand.'