'
Let us now read Charlotte's description in _Shirley_, and I think we have
a tolerably fair estimate of the sisters.
'The two next are girls, Rose and Jessie; they are both now at their
father's knee; they seldom go near their mother, except when obliged
to do so. Rose, the elder, is twelve years old; she is like her
father--the most like him of the whole group--but it is a granite
head copied in ivory; all is softened in colour and line. Yorke
himself has a harsh face; his daughter's is not harsh, neither is it
quite pretty; it is simple--childlike in feature; the round cheeks
bloom; as to the grey eyes, they are otherwise than childlike--a
serious soul lights them--a young soul yet, but it will mature, if
the body lives; and neither father nor mother has a spirit to compare
with it. Partaking of the essence of each, it will one day be better
than either--stronger, much purer, more aspiring. Rose is a still,
and sometimes a stubborn girl now; her mother wants to make of her
such a woman as she is herself--a woman of dark and dreary duties;
and Rose has a mind full-set, thick-sown with the germs of ideas her
mother never knew. It is agony to her often to have these ideas
trampled on and repressed. She has never rebelled yet; but if hard
driven, she will rebel one day, and then it will be once for all.
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