When Mrs. Rowe took you into her confidence--a slow and tedious admission--she was pleased, usually, to fortify your stock of knowledge with a comprehensive view of her family connexions; intended to set the Whytes of Battersea (from whom she derived, before the vulgar Park was there) upon an eminence of glory, with a circle of cringing and designing Rowes at the base. How she--Whyte on both sides, for her father married his first cousin--ever came to marry Joshua Rowe, was something her mother never understood to her dying day. She was graciously open to consolation in the reflection that nobles and princes had made humble matches before her; and particularly in this, that the Prince Regent married Mrs. Fitzherbert. Lucy Rowe was favoured with these observations, heightened by occasional hits at her own misfortune in that she was a Rowe, and could not boast one thimbleful of Whyte blood in her veins. It was the almost daily care of Mrs. Rowe to impress the people with whom her business brought her in contact, with the gulf that lay between her and her niece; although, through the early and inexplicable condescension of a Miss Harriet Whyte, of Battersea, they bore the same name, Miss Rowe was no blood relation _whatever_. It was surprising to see how Lucy bore up under the misfortune. She was not a Whyte, but she had lived beside one. Youth is so elastic! Lucy, albeit she had the Rowe lip and nose, and, worse than all, the Rowe hair (a warm auburn, which Mrs. Rowe described in one syllable, with a picturesque and popular comparison comprehended in two), was daring enough to meet the daylight, without showing the smallest signs of giving way to melancholy. When new comers, as a common effort of politeness, saw a strong likeness between Mrs. Rowe and her niece, the representative of the Whytes of Battersea drew herself to her full height, which was a trifle above her niece's shoulders, and answered--"Oh dear, no, madam! It would be very strange if there were, as there is not the slightest blood relationship between us."