His wife, an intensely proud woman, whose pride was apparent in her air, her dress, her features, sat like an imperious creature whose foible had no other quality than the worst species of haughtiness. Like the very frankest person in the world, she wore-- Her heart upon her sleeve, and displayed its entire sentiment in the material of which her attire was made, in its fashion, and in the style in which it was worn. The jewellery upon her wrists, her arms, her fingers, about her neck, and at her waist, betrayed the only feeling of which she was capable. She lived, moved, breathed in an atmosphere of inordinate, unreasoning pride--no other; and the “people” who came in contact with her felt it before she uttered a word to or glanced at them. In her eyes they were pottery of the commonest earthen material, whilst the clay of which she was herself formed, produced a porcelain of the rarest kind. So she sat; to be looked at, not touched. Her husband, outwardly was of the same stamp. Within, he was begrimed with cowardly meanness, granite selfishness, a cringing obsequiousness to the wealthy and the powerful, and an icy haughtiness to all whom he understood to be his inferiors in position. By his standard, pride was measured as honour and nobility of soul, gold as the essence of all virtue. His daughters, brought up under such guidance, could hardly fail to be impregnated with the principles--or, rather, lack of principle--by which their parents were governed. Yet exercised upon the youngest, their influence failed to win a proselyte. Her organisation had not been adapted by nature to receive the impressions the authors of her being laboured to create, and, therefore, when she hazarded an opinion favourable to the purest sympathies of a kindly nature, or displayed an emotion which betrayed that she had a heart, she was called a fool, and treated as a pariah by the whole family. She had been christened Evangeline, but her imperial mamma frequently informed her it was a misnomer--that, in truth, her name should have been Gosling, which she had somewhere heard, meant a young goose, truly a young silly goose. The second daughter resembled her mother in all things--was, in fact, her counterpart; she even bore her dualistic name, Margaret Claverhouse, and like her maternal parent, was supremely proud and hateful in all her characteristics.