Excerpt 4: At her niece's table she felt at liberty to speak her mind, which she invariably did, with a frankness that sometimes
bordered on brutality. She had long ago outgrown the period where ambition or passion, or its partners, envy and hatre
were springs of action in her life, and simply
retained a mild enjoyment in the exercise of an old habit, with no active
malice whatever
Literary era: realism or romanticism