“Mrs. Philips, I suspect, Thérèse, had much more to tell than she ever was told; at least, her secrets were of a kind that will never be known to come from me. Your confessor shall never have to warn you against me,—unless, indeed, it be my heresy. I would not spoil you, my dear; and that is the reason why I keep you so much with me. It would be hard if I did not love you and let you love me. Now go to bed; and when the sun shines, instead of the moon, we must forget all the wild things we have done this first day.” “I shall never be fit to be a countess,” was her confession to lord F——; “I kissed my maid last night.” “What, Philips!” “O no, no. That would be idiotcy. Philips is at Brighton, you know, where lady Frances spoils her by a more pernicious familiarity than mine with Thérèse. But really this girl wins one’s heart as if she had been born one’s younger sister.” “I dare say she is some countess, or countess’s daughter in disguise; or so some romantic ladies might fancy.” “Ladies who think that nobility is only hereditary. There is disguised nobility in Thérèse; but her patent is sealed with an impress which there are few to recognize, and it is deposited where not many trouble themselves to look for it.” “Side by side with yours, love. Happily, your nobility of that better kind needs be disguised no more than the lesser which you have acquired. This was the chief satisfaction I had in giving you the lesser.” “We will look among the equality folks, as White calls them, for specimens of natural nobility. According to their theory, such always assumes its rank among them, does it not?” “This is one of the professed objects of their system; but it is not fair to look for its fulfilment in such small societies as they have yet been able to form. Master minds are thinly sown.” “There needs not equality of outward condition,” observed Letitia, “to make the best minds master minds. Those who, by virtue of a patent of mental nobility, have held sway over the national mind, have been of all ranks.” “And will so continue to be; for, as long as men are unlike one another, there will be a distinction of ranks, though the distinction may be maintained by a better principle than heritage. Rank and wealth will, I trust, be in time distributed according to natural laws; but degrees of rank and wealth there will always be; and the advocates of a system of equality would greatly promote their cause by a frank recognition of this truth. While all evidence from which a judgment can be formed is before them, and they come to a conclusion in direct opposition to the evidence, I cannot, however much I may respect them on some accounts, think them wise and safe guides of the people. The necessity of inequality of condition may be established thus.” “But first tell me whether their favourite principle of co-operation necessarily involves equality of condition.”