“I have seen you yourself, father, after a meeting with one of these--these high and titled personages, come home pale, careworn, and ill. The contumely of their manner had so offended you that you sat down to your meal without appetite. You could not speak to me; or, in a few words you dropped, I could read the bitter chagrin that was corroding your heart. You owned to me, that in the very moment of receiving favors from you, they never forgot the wide difference of rank that separated you,--nay more, that they accepted your services as a rightful homage to their high estate, and made you feel a kind of serfdom in your very generosity.” “Why all this? To what end do you tell me these things, girl?” cried he, angrily, while his cheek trembled with passion. “Because if I conceal them longer,--if I do not speak them,--they will break my heart,” said she, in an accent of deepest emotion; “because the grief they give me has worn me to very wretchedness. Is it not clear to you, father, that they wish none of us,--that our blood is not their blood, nor our traditions their traditions?” “Hold--stop--be silent, I say, or you will drive me distracted,” said he, grasping her wrist in a paroxysm of rage. “I will speak out,” said she, resolutely. “The courage I now feel may, perhaps, never return to me. There is nothing humiliating in our position, save what we owe to ourselves; there is no meanness in our rank in life, save when we are ashamed of it! Our efforts to be what we were not born to be, what we ought not to be, what we cannot be,--these may, indeed, make us despicable and ridiculous, for there are things in this world, father, that not even gold can buy.” “By Heaven, that is not true!” said he, fiercely. “There never yet was that in rank, honor, and distinction that was not ticketed with its own price! Our haughtiest nobility--the proudest duke in the land--knows well what his alliance with a plebeian order has done for him. Look about you, girl. Who are these marchionesses, these countesses, who sweep past us in their pride? The daughters of men of my own station,--the wealthy traders of the country--” “And what is their position, father? A living lie. What is their haughty carriage? The assumption of a state they were not born to,--the insolent pretension to despise all amidst which they passed their youth, their earliest friendships, their purest, best days. Let them, on the other hand, cling to these; let them love what has grown into their natures from infancy,--the home, the companions of their happy childhood,--and see how the world will scoff at their vulgarity, their innate degeneracy, their low-born habits: vulgar if generous, vulgar when saving; their costly tastes a reproach, their parsimony a sneer.”