She had brought violent discord into a hitherto peaceful vicarage,
thwarted the hopes of a mother, been the cause of a bitter quarrel
between her and her son, brought out by her mysteriousness a prying
tendency in the son that might have gone on sleeping for ever,
entirely upset the amiable Tussie's life by rending him asunder with a
love as strong as it was necessarily hopeless, made his mother anxious
and unhappy, and, what was perhaps the greatest achievement of all,
actually succeeded in making that mother cry. For of course Priscilla
was the ultimate cause of these unusual tears, as Lady Shuttleworth
very well knew. Lady Shuttleworth was the deceased Sir Augustus's
second wife, had married him when she was over forty and well out of
the crying stage, which in the busy does not last beyond childhood,
had lost him soon after Tussie's birth, had cried copiously and most
properly at his funeral, and had not cried since. It was then
undoubtedly a great achievement on the part of the young lady from
nowhere, this wringing of tears out of eyes that had been dry for one
and twenty years.
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