Chapter 14.2 - Shirley

This is no sordid suit. She loves him, not with inferior feelings. She loves, or will love, as he must feel proud to be loved. Not a valid objection can be made. Let them be married then, but afterwards I shall be nothing to him. As for being his sister and all that stuff, I despise it. I will either be all or nothing to a man like Robert, no feeble shuffling or false cant is endurable. Once let that pair be united, and I will certainly leave them. As for lingering about, playing the hypocrite, and pretending to calm sentiments of friendship when my soul will be wrung with other feelings, I shall not descend to such degradation. As little I could fill the place of their mutual friend as that of their deadly foe. As little could I stand between them as trample over them. Robert is a first-rate man in my eyes. I have loved, do love, and must love him. I would be his wife if I could. As I cannot, I must go where I shall never see him. There is but one alternative. To cleave to him, as if I were a part of him, or to be sundered from him, wide as the two poles of a sphere. Sunder me then, Providence. Part us speedily. Some such aspirations as these were again working in her mind late in the afternoon, when the apparition of one of the personages haunting her thoughts passed the parlour window. Miss Kieldas sauntered slowly by, her gait, her countenance, wearing that mixture of wistfulness and carelessness, which, when quiescent, was the wonted cast of her look, and character of her bearing. When animated, the carelessness quite vanished. The wistfulness became blent with a genial gaiety, seasoning the laugh, the smile, the glance, with an unique flavour of sentiment, so that mirth from her never resembled the crackling of thorns under a pot.