Middlemarch — Page 3

她无法调和一种涉及永恒后果的精神生活所带来的焦虑，与对穗带饰物和人工堆砌褶皱的浓厚兴趣。

She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery.

她的心智倾向于理论，天性渴慕对世界有某种崇高的认知，这种认知能够坦然地将蒂普顿教区以及她在那里的行为准则纳入其中。

Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there;

她沉醉于强烈与伟大，轻率地拥抱一切在她看来具有这些特质的事物；她可能会追求殉道，继而撤回立场，然后又在一个她从未预料的地方遭受殉道之苦。

she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it.

一个待嫁女子性格中的这些特质，必然会妨碍她的命运，使其无法按照惯例——凭借美貌、虚荣和单纯如犬般的依恋——来决定终身。

Certainly such elements in the character of a marriageable girl tended to interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being decided according to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely canine affection.

尽管如此，她作为姐妹中的长女，年龄尚不足二十岁；两姐妹自约十二岁失去双亲后，便在一种既狭隘又庞杂的教育方式下成长——先是在一个英国家庭，后来又在洛桑的一个瑞士家庭——她们那位独身的叔父兼监护人试图以此弥补她们身为孤儿的种种不利。

With all this, she, the elder of the sisters, was not yet twenty, and they had both been educated, since they were about twelve years old and had lost their parents, on plans at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English family and afterwards in a Swiss family at Lausanne, their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this way to remedy the disadvantages of their orphaned condition.

她们来到蒂普顿庄园与叔父同住，至今尚不足一年。叔父年近六十，性情随和，见解驳杂，投票立场也飘忽不定。

It was hardly a year since they had come to live at Tipton Grange with their uncle, a man nearly sixty, of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions, and uncertain vote.