Lottie was overpowered by all the different sensations that succeeded each other in her. She felt herself swept by what felt like repeated waves of trouble--shame to hear of these people among whom both her father and brother found their pleasure, shame to have thought more badly of them than they deserved, shame to have betrayed to Law her knowledge that there were women existing of whom to speak was a shame. She sank down upon the sofa again trembling and agitated, relieved yet not relieved. “Law,” she said faintly, “we are poor enough ourselves, I know. But even if we don’t do much credit to our birth, is it not dreadful to be content with that, to go down lower, to make ourselves nothing at all?” “It is not my fault,” said Law, a little moved, “nor yours neither. I am very sorry for you, Lottie; for you’ve got such a high mind--it will go hardest with you. As for me, I’ve got no dignity to stand on, and if he drives me to it, I shall simply ’list--that’s what I shall do.” “’List!” Lottie gazed at him pathetically. She was no longer angry, as she had been when he spoke of this before. “You are out of your senses, Law! You, a _gentleman_!” “A gentleman!” he said bitterly, “much good it does me. It might, perhaps, be of some use if we were rich, if we belonged to some great family which nobody could mistake; but the kind of gentlefolks we are!--nobody knowing anything about us, except through what _he_ pleases to do and say. I tell you, if the worst comes to the worst, I will go straight off to the first sergeant I see, and take the shilling. In the Guards there’s many a better gentleman than I am, and I’m tall enough for the Guards,” he said, looking down with a little complacence on his own long limbs. The look struck Lottie with a thrill of terror and pain. There were soldiers enough about St. Michael’s to make her keenly and instantly aware how perfectly their life, as it appeared to her, would chime in with Law’s habits. They seemed to Lottie to be always lounging about the streets stretching their long limbs, expanding their broad chests in the sight of all the serving maidens, visible in their red coats wherever the idle congregated, wherever there was any commotion going on. She perceived in a moment, as by a flash of lightning, that nothing could be more congenial to Law. What work might lie behind, what difficulties of subordination, tyrannies of hours and places, distasteful occupations--Lottie knew nothing about. She saw in her brother’s complacent glance, a something of kin to the swagger of the tall fellows in their red jackets, spreading themselves out before admiring nursemaids. Law would do that too. She could not persuade herself that there was anything in him above the swagger, superior to the admiration of the maids. A keen sense of humiliation, and the sharp impatience of a proud spirit, unable to inspire those most near to it with anything of its own pride and energy, came into her mind. “You do