"If I were you I wouldn't allow my husband an hour's peace till he removed to the West-end," she said; "I hear he earns heaps of money, and it's really shameful of him to keep you here." "My dear Florence, if I were to ask Mr. O'Boyneville to take a house at the West-end, I'm sure he would do so immediately." "Then why in goodness' name don't you ask him?" "Because he would be so ready to grant my request, and I don't wish to impose upon his kindness." "Impose upon his fiddlesticks! Really, Cecil, you provoke me into being vulgar: and I wonder how it is, by-the-bye, that all great emotions have a tendency to make one vulgar. I shall lose all common patience if you insist upon talking like the good young woman in a novel. What did you marry Mr. O'Boyneville for unless it was for a handsome house and a fashionable carriage?" "I married him because I loved him," Cecil answered gravely, "and because I hoped to make him a good wife." Flo's piquant eyebrows elevated themselves to their utmost extent as her friend said this. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "of course that alters the case: but you really _are_ like the young woman in a novel, Cecil; and I could never quite bring myself to believe in that young woman." And then the impulsive Florence pounced upon her friend, and embraced her with effusion, declaring that she loved her dearest Cecil to distraction, and that she would not for worlds say any thing to wound or distress her. "I'm such a mercenary wretch myself, dear," she said, "that I fancy every body must be made of the same contemptible stuff. The girls I meet are so like me, and all our ideas seem to run in the same groove. Do you know, Cecil, I sometimes think that if we are unbelieving and mercenary--if we worship nothing but the pomps and vanities of society--our wickedness is only the natural effect of the precepts instilled into the youthful mind by those dreadful grandmothers and maiden aunts of the old school, who were always preaching against all that is romantic and poetical, and whose dearest delight was to bray their children's brains in the stony mortar of common-sense." Once, and once only, did Cecil venture to speak earnestly to Florence Crawford on the subject of her approaching marriage. All those vague allusions to the mercenary sentiments of modern damsels, which Miss Crawford was so fond of uttering, seemed to Cecil like so many excuses for her union with the rich young Manchester man. She had not the heart to ask direct questions, but she spoke very seriously--as she would have spoken to a sister.