Chapter 12.17 - Shirley

She soon found that it needed but to know both ladies to comprehend fully the enigma. Everyone, it seemed to her, must like, must love, must prize Mrs. Pryor when they knew her. No matter that she perseveringly wore old-fashioned gowns, that her speech was former and her manner cool, that she had twenty little ways such as nobody else had, she was still such a stay, such a counsellor, so truthful, so kind in her way, that, in Caroline's idea, none, once accustomed to her presence, could easily afford to dispense with it. As to dependency or humiliation, Caroline did not feel it in her intercourse with Shirley, and why should Mrs. Pryor? The heiress was rich, very rich compared with her new friend. One possessed a clear thousand a year. The other not a penny. And yet there was a safe sense of equality experienced in her society, never known in that of the ordinary Brierfield and Winbury gentry. The reason was, Shirley's head ran on other things than money and position. She was glad to be independent as to property. By fits she was even elated at the notion of being lady of the manor and having tenants and an estate. She was especially tickled with unagreeable complacency when reminded of all that property down in the hollow, comprising an excellent cloth mill, dye-house, warehouse, together with the messuage, gardens, and outbuildings, termed Hollow's Cottage. But her exultation being quite undisguised was singularly inoffensive, and, for her serious thoughts, they tended elsewhere. To admire the great, reverence the good, and be joyous with the genial, was very much the bent of Shirley's soul. She mused, therefore, on the means of following this bent far oftener than she pondered on her social superiority.