Miss Marjoribanks by Margaret Oliphant

Miss Marjoribanks's mind had scarcely subsided out of the first exhilarating sense of a great many things to do, and a truly important mission in hand, when little Rose Lake sought her with that confession of family troubles, and prayer for counsel and aid in the extremity, which opened a new way and mode of working to Lucilla. Rose was proud, poor little soul, not only of her exceptional position, and that of her family, as a family of artists, but also with a constitutional and individual pride as one of the natural conservators of domestic honour, who would rather have died than have heard the Lakes lightly spoken of, or upbraided with debt or indecorum, or any other crime. She had been silent as long as she could about Barbara's shortcomings, jealously concealing them from all the world, and attacking them with a violence which made her big elder sister, who was twice as big and six times as strong as she, tremble before her when they were alone.

But little Rose had at length found things come to a point beyond which her experience did not go. Barbara began to have secret meetings with a man whose presence nobody was aware of, and who did not come openly to the house to seek her, and persevered, in spite of all remonstrances, in this clandestine career; and all the prejudices and all the instincts of the young artist rose up against her. A vague presentiment of greater evil behind impelled her to some action, and shame and pride combined at the same time to keep her silent. She could not speak to her father, because the poor man lost his head straightway, and made piteous appeals to her not to make a fuss, and threw the burden back again upon her with a double weight; and besides, he was only a man, though he was her father, and Rose had the pride of a woman in addition to her other pride.