"Don't ask me--I can't." The little girls were hushed into silence by her manner; for whatever she might be to those above her in age and position, to those below her Jemima was almost invariably gentle.

She felt that they were wondering at her.
"Go upstairs and take off your things.

You know papa does not like you to come into this room in the shoes in which you have been out." She was glad to cut her sisters short in the details which they were so mercilessly inflicting--details which she must harden herself to, before she could hear them quietly and unmoved.

She saw that she had lost her place as the first object in Mr Farquhar's eyes--a position she had hardly cared for while she was secure in the enjoyment of it; but the charm of it now was redoubled, in her acute sense of how she had forfeited it by her own doing, and her own fault.

For if he were the cold, calculating man her father had believed him to be, and had represented him as being to her, would he care for a portionless widow in humble circumstances like Mrs Denbigh; no money, no connexion, encumbered with her boy?
The very action which proved Mr Farquhar to be lost to Jemima reinstated him on his throne in her fancy.