“Happiness is a very large word. If it were for Nelly that you were interesting yourself, I 've no doubt your advice and counsel ought to have great weight; but I am not one of your love-in-a-cottage young ladies, Gusty. I am, I must own it, excessively worldly. Whatever happiness I could propose to myself in life is essentially united to a certain ambition. We have as many of the advantages of mere wealth as most people: as fine equipage, as many footmen, as good a cook, and as costly silver; and what do they do for us? They permit us simply to enter the lists with a set of people who have high-stepping horses and powdered lackeys like ourselves, but who are no more the world, no more society, than one of papa's Indiamen is a ship of the Royal Navy. Why do I say this to you, who were at Oxford, who saw it all--ay, and felt it all--in those fresh years of youth when these are sharp sufferings? You know well--you told me your griefs at the time--that you were in a set without being 'of it;' that the stamp of inequality was as indelibly fixed upon you as though you were a corporal and wore coarse cloth. Now, these things are hard to bear for a man; for a woman they are intolerable. She has not the hundred and one careers in life in which individual distinction can obliterate the claims of station. She has but one stage,--the _salon_; but, to her, this narrow world, soft-carpeted and damask-curtained, is a very universe, and without the recognized stamp of a certain rank in it, she is absolutely nothing.” “And may not all these things be bought too dearly, Marion?” “I don't know the price I 'd call too high for them.” “What! Not your daily happiness? not your self-esteem! not the want of the love of one who would have your whole heart in his keeping?” “So he may, if he can give me the rank I care for.” “Oh, Marion! I cannot think this of you,” cried he, bitterly. “That is to say, that you want me to deceive you with false assurances of unbought affection and the like; and you are angry because I will not play the hypocrite. Lord Culduff has made me an offer of his hand, and I have accepted it. You are aware that I am my own mistress. Whatever I possess, it is absolutely my own; and though I intend to speak with my father, and, if it may be, obtain his sanction, I will not say that his refusal would induce me to break off my engagement.” “At all events, you are not yet this man's wife, Marion,” said he, with more determination than he had yet shown; “and I forbid you positively to impart to Lord Culduff anything regarding this telegram.” “I make no promises.”