"What every one else does, who knows her--that she is the greatest hypocrite that ever breathed. Perfectly selfish, self-righteous, and uncharitable. She says, notwithstanding her sweet countenance, she has a very bad temper, and that no one is willing to live in the same house with her." "You told me formerly," said Henry, "that she was _over_ charitable and kind, constantly engaged in labours of love." "Oh, yes!" answered she, with perfect self-possession; "there is no end to the parade she makes about her _good works_, as she calls them, but it is for ostentation, and to obtain the reputation of a saint, that she does them." "But," said Henry, very warmly, "supposing she exercised this same heavenly charity when she believed no eye beheld her, but the poor whom she relieved, and the sick whom she healed, and the God whom she adores; would you call that ostentation?" "Oh, my dear Mr. More," cried Miss Hart, with a musical laugh, "you do not know half the arts of the sex. There is a young minister and young physician too, in the neighbourhood, who know all her secret movements, and hear her praises from morning till night--they say they are both in love with her, but as her cousin hasn't been dead long, she thinks it proper to be very demure--I must say frankly and honestly, I have no faith in these female _Tartuffes_." "Nor I neither," added Henry, with so peculiar a manner, that Miss Hart started and looked inquisitively at him, with her dark, dilated eyes. She feared she had hazarded too much, and immediately observed, "Perhaps, in my abhorrence of duplicity and hypocrisy, I run into the opposite extreme, and express my sentiments too openly. You think me severe, but I can have no possible motive to depreciate Miss Carroll, but as she herself stretches every one on the bed of Procrustes, I feel at liberty to speak my opinion of her character, not mine only, but that of the whole world." Henry made some evasive reply, and turned the conversation to another topic, leaving Miss Hart lost in a labyrinth of conjecture, as to the impression she had made on his mind--where and when had he met Lois Carroll, and why was he so reserved upon a theme, upon which he had once been so eloquent? She sat for half an hour after Henry left her, pondering on these things, and looking at one figure in the carpet, as if her eyes grew upon the spot, when her thoughts were turned into another channel by the entrance of Captain Wentworth.