She also knew that
she was quite courageous, that she had magnificent physical health,
and that she could be perfectly content with a life that a good many
other people would find narrow and stifling.
Her own character then was one thing that she had studied--not in the
least in a morbid way--during her life at Stantons. And another thing
she was beginning to study, rather to her own surprise, was the
character of Laurie. She began to become a little astonished at the
frequency with which, during a silent drive, or some mild mechanical
labor in the gardens, the image of that young man would rise before
her.
Indeed, as has been said, she had new material to work on. She had not
realized till the _affaire_ Amy that boy's astonishing selfishness;
and it became for her a rather pleasant psychological exercise to
build up his characteristics into a consistent whole. It had not
struck her, till this specimen came before her notice, how generosity
and egotism, for example, so far from being mutually exclusive, can
very easily be complements, each of the other.
So then she passed her days--exteriorly a capable and occupied person,
interested in half a dozen simple things; interiorly rather
introspective, rather scrupulous, and intensely interested in the
watching of two characters--her own and her adopted brother's.
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