From thence the young lady proceeded to think, and in whispers to herself to say, that few persons had such a true and proper sentiment of the sublime and beautiful as she had, and that the peculiarity which separated the higher from the lower classes was not merely hereditary claim or distinguished and extraordinary opulence, but rather a sort of a kind of a superfine, elegant, nobody knows what, which Miss Glossop possessed, according to her own notion of that matter, most superabundantly. And while Miss Glossop meditated, Miss Glossop became in her own mind a countess, a marchioness, a duchess. This was indeed but a proper and suitable compensation for the annoyance which she had experienced from the wise, virtuous, censorious, and disinterested prating of Lady Aimwell. CHAPTER V. All as yet had been silence at Neverden rectory. Mr Darnley the elder, and Mrs Darnley and the young ladies, all knew as well as could be that Robert had renewed his acquaintance with Miss Primrose; but the father was wilfully and perversely silent on the subject, and the rest of the family felt themselves in duty bound to be silent also. There is something curious and awkward in a kind of family--not quarrel, but coldness, when the family is not habituated to anything of that nature. Some families always have a species of domestic sparring, or are periodically visited with a fit of family sulks, and then it passes off very glibly and quietly, and makes no more alteration in, or impression upon, the ordinary family features, than does the light cloud that passes over the moon. It was not so with the Darnleys. They had always been an united, harmonious, sensible, well conducted family. Mrs Darnley thought her husband to be little short of a conjuror, sure proof that she was none. The young ladies, though they had read Locke’s Essay, De Lolme on the Constitution, and Mitford’s History of Greece, yet thought that their father knew every thing that an honest man ought to know. But the females of the family had of late years begun to divide their intellectual allegiance between the father and son; for Robert had written such “very pretty” letters, and had conveyed to them so much information, that they could not but regard him as a very superior kind of personage. Seeing that the young gentleman had been abroad, it became natural to his mother and sisters to imagine that he must know much more than those who had not been abroad; but neither mother nor sisters, with all the advantages which they had derived from the wisdom of the rector of Neverden, had ever found out or even suspected the difference between knowing more and knowing better.