marriage, she felt that a woman who is no blessing in her own
household, is never likely much to bless a husband's; and that,
looking still farther forward, it was, on the whole, a mercy of
Providence, which made Selina not the mother of children.

Yet her not marrying had been somewhat a surprise; for she had been
attractive in her day, handsome and agreeable in society. But
perhaps, for all that, the sharp eye of the opposite sex had
discovered the cloven foot; since, though she had received various
promising attentions, poor Selina had never had an offer. Nor,
fortunately, had she ever been known to care for any body; she was
one of those women who would have married as a matter of course, but
who never would have been guilty of the weakness of falling in love.
There seemed small probability of shipping her off, to carry into a
new household the restlessness, the fretfulness, the captious
fault-finding with others, the readiness to take offence at what was
done and said to herself, which made poor Selina Leaf the
unacknowledged grief and torment of her own.

Her two sisters sat silent. What was the use of talking? It would be
only going ever and over again the old thing; trying to ease and
shift a little the long familiar burden which they knew must be
borne. Nearly every household has, near or remote, some such burden,
which Heaven only can lift off or help to bear. And sometimes,
looking round the world outside, these two congratulated themselves,
in a half sort of way, that theirs was as light as it was; that
Selina was after all, a well-meaning well-principled woman, and, in
spite of her little tempers, really fond of her family, as she truly
was, at least as fond as a nature which has its centre in self can
manage to be.