ore; craving; whining; and idling—and suffer the results of your idiocy; however bad and insuperable they may be。 I tell you this plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now about to say; I shall steadily act on it。 After my mother’s death; I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried to the vault in Gateshead Church; you and I will be as separate as if we had never known each other。 You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents; I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this—if the whole human race; ourselves excepted; were swept away; and we two stood alone on the earth; I would leave you in the old world; and betake myself to the new。”
She closed her lips。
“You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade;” answered Georgiana。 “Everybody knows you are the most selfish; heartless creature in existence: and I know your spiteful hatred towards me: I have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you; to have a title; to be received into circles where you dare not show your face; and so you acted the spy and informer; and ruined my prospects for ever。” Georgiana took out her handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat cold; impassable; and assiduously industrious。
True; generous feeling is made small account of by some; but here were two natures rendered; the one intolerably acrid; the other despicably savourless for the want of it。 Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition。
It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fall