Over and over again did she hear disparaging remarks bestowed upon the striving efforts of “respectable poverty,” its contrivances derided, its little straits held up to ridicule. In dress, equipage, or household, whatever it did was certain to be absurd; and yet all of these people, so laughed at and scorned, were in the enjoyment of means far above her own father's! What a false position was this! How full of deceit must she become to sustain it! She invoked all her sophistry to assure herself that their condition was a mere passing state; that at some future perhaps not even a remote one they should have “their own again;” and that as in family and descent they were the equals of any, so they were not inferior in all the just claims to consideration and respect. She tried to think of her father and Nelly moving in the circles she now lived in; but, even alone, and in the secrecy of her own thoughts, her cheek became scarlet with shame, and she actually shuddered at the very notion. And even Frank, her once ideal of all that was graceful and noble-looking, how would he pass muster beside these essenced “fashionables” who now surrounded her! She endeavored to console herself by thinking that her father would have despised the lounging, unmanly lives they led, that Ellen would have retired in bashful modesty from a society whose tone of freedom and license would have shocked her, and that Frank would have found no companionship in a class whose pleasures lay only in dissipation; and yet all her casuistry could not reassure her. The fascinations amid which she lived were stronger than her reason. She became first aware of the great change in herself on recognizing how differently a letter from home affected her to what it had done some months before. At first she would have hastened to her room, and locked the door, in an ecstasy of delight to be alone with dearest Nelly, to commune with her own sweet sister in secret, to hang on every line, every word, with delight, fancying herself once more with arms clasped around her, or bending down beside her cheek as she leaned over her work-table. How every little detail would move her; how every allusion would bring up home before her, the snug little chamber of an evening, as the bright fire glowed on the hearth, and Nelly brought out her tools for modelling, while Hanserl was searching for some passage, a line, or a description that Nelly wanted; and then the little discussions that would ensue as to the shape of some weapon, or the fashion of some costume of a past age, so often broken in upon by her father, whose drolleries would set them laughing!