first military duty was obedience," and Francis's instant submission
proved that she had made a good shot. Of the Major she had heard
much more. Everything was referred to him, both by mother and
children, and Alison was the more puzzled as to his exact connexion
with them. "I sometimes suspect," she said, "that he may have felt
the influence of those winsome brown eyes and caressing manner, as I
know I should if I were a man. I wonder how long the old general has
been dead? No, Ermine, you need not shake your head at me. I don't
mean even to let Miss Curtis tell me if she would. I know
confidences from partisan relations are the most mischief-making
things in the world."

In pursuance of this principle Alison, or Miss Williams, as she was
called in her vocation, was always reserved and discreet, and though
ready to talk in due measure, Rachel always felt that it was the
upper, not the under current that was proffered. The brow and eyes,
the whole spirit of the face, betokened reflection and acuteness, and
Rachel wanted to attain to her opinions; but beyond a certain depth
there was no reaching. Her ways of thinking, her views of the
children's characters, her estimate of Mr. Touchett--nay, even her
tastes as to the Invalid's letters in the "Traveller's Review,"
remained only partially revealed, in spite of Rachel's best efforts
at fishing, and attempting to set the example.

"It really seemed," as she observed to Grace, "as if the more I talk,
the less she says." At which Grace gave way to a small short laugh,
though she owned the force of Rachel's maxim, that to bestow
confidence was the way to provoke it; and forbore to refer to a
certain delightful afternoon that Rachel, in her childhood, had spent
alone with a little girl whom she had never discovered to be deaf and