The girl had grown up
in an atmosphere unfavourable to mental development, but she had received a
fairly good education, and nature had dowered her with intelligence. A
sense of her father's conscientiousness and of his true affection forbade
her to criticise openly the principles on which he had directed her life;
hence a habit of solitary meditation, which half fostered, yet half
opposed, the gentle diffidence of Rose's character.
Mr. Whiston shrank from society, ceaselessly afraid of receiving less than
his due; privately, meanwhile, he deplored the narrowness of the social
opportunities granted to his daughter, and was for ever forming schemes for
her advantage--schemes which never passed beyond the stage of nervous
speculation. They inhabited a little house in a western suburb, a house
illumined with every domestic virtue; but scarcely a dozen persons crossed
the threshold within a twelvemonth. Rose's two or three friends were, like
herself, mistrustful of the world. One of them had lately married after a
very long engagement, and Rose still trembled from the excitement of that
occasion, still debated fearfully with herself on the bride's chances of
happiness. Her own marriage was an event so inconceivable that merely to
glance at the thought appeared half immodest and wholly irrational.
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