"But it would please papa," said Susan, with some timidity, as if this was rather a doubtful argument; "and then, perhaps he might be persuaded to do what you wish, Horace, if you tried to please _him_." "To please papa," said her brother, imitating her words with contemptuous mockery, "is an inducement indeed. To please _him_! Why should I please him, I should like to know? What has he ever done for me? At least, I shan't cheat him with a false submission. I'd rather chuck the lot of them into the fire, than have him suppose that I read German, or anything else, for _his_ sake!" "But oh, Horace, you would make me _so_ unhappy!" said Susan, with a little unconscious gesture of entreaty, letting her work fall, and clasping her hands as she looked up in his face. "I suppose so," said the young man, with perfect indifference. "And you don't care?" cried his sister, moved to a momentary overflow of those sudden tears of mortification and injured affection which women weep over such cool, conscious, voluntary disregard. "I would do anything in the world for you, but you don't mind how I feel; and yet there are only two of us in the world." "So much the better," said Horace, throwing himself down in a chair before the fire; "and as for those vain professions, what is the use of them, I should like to know? What _could_ you do for me, if you were ever so anxious? Anything in the world, in our circumstances, means simply nothing, Susan. Oh! for heaven's sake, don't cry!--you're a good girl, and sew on my buttons--but what, in the name of fortune, could _you_ do? You know as well as I that it is only a fashion of words----" "I did not mean it so," cried Susan, quickly--but stopping as suddenly, cast a hurried, painful look at him, and dried her tears with a hasty hand--the look which natural Truth casts upon that cruel, reasonable fool, Wisdom, whom she cannot contest, yet knows in the wrong. A little indignation burning up upon her ingenuous cheek helped the hurried hand to dry the tears, and she returned to her work with a little tremble of haste, such as a discussion with her brother very frequently threw Susan into. She did not pretend to argue with him: she was not clever, but his philosophy filled her with impatience. She "could not bear it." She felt inclined to get up and seize hold of him, and try physical measures to shake this arrogant pretence of truth out of him; for Susan, though she could not argue, was not without a temper and opinion of her own.