"'Tis almost a pity," Mrs. Rouncewell adds — only "almost" because it borders on impiety to suppose that anything could be better than it is, in such an express dispensation as the Dedlock affairs — "that my Lady has no family. If she had had a daughter now, a grown young lady, to interest her, I think she would have had the only kind of excellence she wants."

"Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?" says Watt, who has been home and come back again, he is such a good grandson.

"More and most, my dear," returns the housekeeper with dignity, "are words it's not my place to use — nor so much as to hear — applied to any drawback on my Lady."

"I beg your pardon, grandmother. But she is proud, is she not?"