"But you had no need to be remorseful, papa," cried Flo, who perceived that she had touched too sad a memory, "for mamma loved you dearly, and she was happier with you than she would have been in a palace--even if people were generally happy in palaces, which, as far as I can ascertain, they are not. But I'm not like mamma. I have been brought up among rich people, and the thought of poverty frightens me. I look at houses sometimes in which people exist, and are tolerably happy, I suppose, in their own miserable way, and I think that I _couldn't_ live in such a house or in such a neighbourhood. Do you remember taking me up to some place near Islington to see one of Mr. Foley's pictures? Islington seemed like a new world to me, and I felt that I should commit suicide if I lived there a week. To be out of reach of the parks, to have no horse to ride, no pretty dresses to wear, no nice fashionable friends to visit, to ride in omnibuses, and wear old-fashioned bonnets, and go through life shabby and dowdy and neglected--oh, what utter misery it all seems! I know all this sounds selfish and horrible, papa; but I have been brought up to be selfish and horrible." "I dare say your feelings are perfectly natural, my dear," replied Mr. Crawford, "but I don't understand them. I don't understand you. I understand nothing about the age in which I live. All I can say to you is to implore you to think seriously before you take so serious a step as that you talk of so lightly. It seems the fashion to talk lightly of solemn things nowadays; and no one would imagine from the manner in which people discuss a marriage that it was to be the affair of a lifetime. You are very young, Flory, and you can afford to wait. If you feel that you can be happy with Mr. Lobyer, marry him: but if you have the slightest doubt upon that point, let no inducement upon earth tempt you to become his wife. The unhappy marriages of the present day end in the divorce court. But, as I said before, you can afford to wait." "Oh, yes, papa," cried Miss Crawford, "and while I am waiting and deliberating, some designing minx will pounce upon Mr. Lobyer and marry him before I know where I am. What a dear, unsophisticated thing you are, and what a dreadful worldly wretch I am, papa! But you see I am not so much worse than other people. There is your model Gretchen, your favourite Cecil Chudleigh, who was always lecturing me about my mercenary sentiments; yet you see, after all, she has married a great lumbering Irish barrister, only because he has two or three thousand a-year." "But Lady Cecil may be very much attached to Mr. O'Boyneville." "Yes, papa," answered Flo pertly, "she may; but then, on the other hand, she mayn't. Attached to him, indeed!--a man whose coats and collars were made in the year one, and must have been old-fashioned then, I should think, if Adam had decent taste in dress."