"We are all over-ready," continued Henrietta, "to blame others, and that is the way I have been doing all this time myself; but I don't blame my poor brother now for living so with the great as I used to do, for now I have seen a little more of the world, I don't wonder any longer at his behaviour: for I know how it is, and I see that those who have had good educations, and kept great company, and mixed with the world,--O it is another thing!--they seem quite a different species!-- they are so gentle, so soft-mannered! nothing comes from them but what is meant to oblige! they seem as if they only lived to give pleasure to other people, and as if they never thought at all of themselves!"
"Ah Henrietta!" said Cecilia, shaking her head, "you have caught the enthusiasm of your brother, though you so long condemned it! Oh have a care lest, like him also, you find it as pernicious as it is alluring!"
"There, is no danger for me, madam," answered she, "for the people I so much admire are quite out of my reach. I hardly ever even see them; and perhaps it may so happen I may see them no more!"
"The people?" said Cecilia, smiling, "are there, then, many you so much distinguish?"
"Oh no indeed!" cried she, eagerly, "there is only one! there can be --I mean there are only a few--" she checked herself, and stopt.
"Whoever you admire," cried Cecilia, "your admiration cannot but honour: yet indulge it not too far, lest it should wander from your heart to your peace, and make you wretched for life."
"Ah madam!--I see you know who is the particular person I was thinking of! but indeed you are quite mistaken if you suppose any thing bad of me!"
"Bad of you!" cried Cecilia, embracing her, "I scarce think so well of any one!"
"But I mean, madam, if you think I forget he is so much above me. But indeed I never do; for I only admire him for his goodness to my brother, and never think of him at all, but just by way of comparing him, sometimes, to the other people that I see, because he makes me hate them so, that I wish I was never to see them again."
"His acquaintance, then," said Cecilia, "has done you but an ill office, and happy it would be for you could you forget you had ever made it."
"O, I shall never do that! for the more I think of him, the more I am out of humour with every body else! O Miss Beverley! we have a sad acquaintance indeed! I'm sure I don't wonder my brother was so ashamed of them. They are all so rude, and so free, and put one so out of countenance,--O how different is this person you are thinking of! he would not distress anybody, or make one ashamed for all the world! You only are like him! always gentle, always obliging!--sometimes I think you must be his sister--once, too, I heard--but that was contradicted."