Gone again that expression, when Cecilia spoke to her: whatever she said, Miss Clarendon differed from; if it was a matter of taste, she was always of the contrary opinion; if narrative or assertion, she questioned, doubted, seemed as if she could not believe. Her conversation, if conversation it could be called, was a perpetual rebating and regrating, especially with her sister-in-law; if Lady Cecilia did but say there were three instead of four, it was taken up as “quite a mistake,” and marked not only as a mistake, but as “not true.” Every, the slightest error, became a crime against majesty, and the first day ended with Helen’s thinking her really the most disagreeable, intolerable person she had ever seen. And the second day went on a little worse. Helen thought Cecilia took too much pains to please, and said it would be better to let her quite alone. Helen did so completely, but Miss Clarendon did not let Helen alone; but watched her with penetrating eyes continually, listened to every word she said, and seeming to weigh every syllable,--“Oh, my words are not worth your weighing,” said Helen, laughing. “Yes they are, to settle my mind.” The first thing that seemed at all to settle it was Helen’s not agreeing with Cecilia about the colour of two ribands which Helen said she could not flatter her were good matches. The next was about a drawing of Miss Clarendon’s, of Llansillan, her place in Wales; a beautiful drawing indeed, which she had brought for her brother, but one of the towers certainly was out of the perpendicular. Helen was appealed to, and could not say it was upright; Miss Clarendon instantly took up a knife, cut the paper at the back of the frame, and, taking out the drawing, set the tower to rights. “There’s the use of telling the truth.” “Of listening to it,” said Helen. “We shall get on, I see, Miss Stanley, if you can get over the first bitter outside of me;--a hard outside, difficult to crack--stains delicate fingers, may be,” she continued, as she replaced her drawing in its frame--“stains delicate fingers, may be, in the opening, but a good walnut you will find it, taken with a grain of salt.” Many a grain seemed necessary, and very strong nut-crackers in very strong hands. Lady Cecilia’s evidently were not strong enough, though she strained hard. Helen did not feel inclined to try. Cecilia invited Miss Clarendon to walk out and see some of the alterations her brother had made. As they passed the new Italian garden, Miss Clarendon asked, “What’s all this?--don’t like this--how I regret the Old English garden, and the high beech hedges. Every thing is to be changed here, I suppose,--pray do not ask my opinion about any of the alterations.” “I do not wonder,” said Cecilia, “that you should prefer the old garden, with all your early associations; warm-hearted, amiable people must always be so fond of what they have loved in childhood.”