"One reads about cruel parents and heart-broken damsels, but I don't think your papa would set his face against Mr Foley so sternly as you set yours, Flory," she said. "He was talking of the young painter the other day, and he told me that your friend Philip has a great career before him if he works patiently." "Yes, and when he is as old as papa he will be able to earn two or three thousand a-year, I suppose!" exclaimed Miss Crawford. "Do you think that is a brilliant prospect for a girl who cannot live out of society? People with any thing under five thousand a-year are paupers--in society. Do you know what it is that is bearing down upon us, and crushing us all, Cecil, like an avalanche of gold? It is the wealth of the commercial plutocracy. The triumphant monster, Commerce, is devouring us all. Ask papa who buys his pictures; ask where the gems from Christie's go when the great auctions are over; ask why diamonds are worth twice as much to-day as they were twenty years ago: it is all because the princes of trade have taken possession of our land, Cecil, and nowadays a girl must set her cap in the direction of Manchester, if she wishes to marry well." "Florence, I can't bear to hear you talk like this." "I am a woman of the world, dear, and I mean to do the best I can for myself. It is very dreadful, I know, but at least I am candid with you. I went to a fashionable school, and you've no idea how we all worshipped wealth and finery. Papa used to come and see me in horrid old hansom cabs, that jingled and rattled as if they would have fallen to pieces when he stepped out of them; but some girls had fathers and mothers who came in two-hundred-guinea barouches, and oh, what a gulf there was between us! and then, again, poor mamma's people live in Russell Square, and there were girls at that school who made me feel that it was a kind of disgrace to have friends in Russell Square. And when I spent the holidays with my uncles and aunts, I used to have mamma's foolish marriage dinned into my ears; and though I always took her part, and declared that it was better to marry papa than to marry a prince of the blood royal, I _did_ think, in my secret soul, that it was very silly to go and live in shabby lodgings near the noisy dirty Strand. Is it any wonder that I have grown up heartless and mercenary, and that I want to have a fine house and horses and carriages when I marry? I hope you will marry a rich man too, Cecil, and give nice parties. You won't have Thursdays though, will you, dear? I have set my heart on having Thursday for my own, own evening." To this effect Miss Crawford would discourse in her own vivacious fashion; and it was in vain that Cecil appealed to the unawakened heart.