Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/217

Rh in our ways, in our ideas, in our submission to the social laws, in our arm-in-arm plod along the road of duty, to satisfy her. She wants some one with great ideas to guide her; with high-flown sentiment; to such an one alone will she look up. She is young, this will wear off, and she will sober down, and come to regard hum-drum life with respect."

"In the meantime much folly may be perpetrated," said Lady Lamerton sadly. "Do look how much has been spent in the restoration of Orleigh. You have undone all that your grandfather had done. He overlaid the stone with stucco, and knocked out the mullions of the windows for the insertion of sashes, and painted over drab all the oak that was not cut away. So are we in later years restoring the mistakes made in ourselves, perhaps by our parents in our bringing up, but certainly, also, by our own folly and bad taste in youth. And well for us if there is still solid stone to be cleared of plaster, and rich old oak to be cleared of the paint that obscures it. What I dread is lest the iconoclastic spirit should be so strong in the girl that she may hack and tear down in her violent passion for change what can never be recovered and re-erected."

"She is not without principle."

"She mistakes her caprices for principles. Her own will is the ruling motive of all her actions, she has no external canon to which she regulates her actions and submits her will."

"What caprice has she got now?"

"She has taken a violent fancy to the society of young Saltren."

"Oh! he is harmless."

"I am not so certain of that. He is morbid and discontented."

"Discontented! About what? Faith he must be hard to please then. Everything has been done for him that could be done."