“Ada, I did not say that, and I did not mean it; you might at least spare to charge me with malice which is not in my nature. Let us speak freely to each other now that we have begun.” Isabel’s colour had heightened, and her words lost their deliberateness. “I know too well what your opinion of me is. You think me a vain, superficial, worldly woman, ready to make any sacrifice of my pride--the poor pride that every creature has--just for the sake of keeping my place and the means to support it, and overflowing with bitterness against the one who will some day take everything from me. It is natural; you have never exerted yourself to know me better. It is natural, too, because I _have_, in fact, made an extraordinary sacrifice of my pride, have eaten my own shame with every mouthful under this roof since my widowhood--oh, since my marriage! For all that, I am not evil-natured; it is not in my heart to cherish malice. I do not feel hardly to you. Put it down to my poor spirit if you like, but the resentment I once had I have quite got over, and I wish you nothing but good. Why do I say all this? Only because I want to convince you that, if you ever take me into your confidence, I shall not advise you with selfish motives. And there was no selfishness in what I said to you just now. It was my duty to say it, misunderstand my words how you may.” The silence which followed seemed a long one. Isabel had hidden her face. Ada was making marks on the table with a pencil. “I don’t think,” replied the latter at length, “that I have ever charged you in my mind with this kind of selfishness; you are quite mistaken in what you say of my opinion of you. Please to remember, Mrs. Clarendon, that I too have my difficulties. I have not reached this age without questioning myself about many things. I have long ceased to be a child; the world is not so simple to me as it was then. Many things require explanation which as a child I scarcely troubled about or explained as a child does.” Isabel uncovered her face and regarded the girl gravely. Ada returned the look. “I once asked you,” the latter continued, in a lower voice, and with hurried utterance, “to tell me something about myself--how I came to be living with you. You only tell me that I was an orphan. Am I ever to know more?”