poor and bald, you cannot look me in the face and say that it is any
passion resembling love which you feel for my nephew. And as to
position, it is right that I should inform you that if he marry you
he will have none. He may risk his inheritance. You will receive
no countenance from his parents. You will be poor, but not free. You
will not gain the independence you seek for. The sight of a vacant,
discontented face in that opposite chair will be worse than solitude.
And as to grateful affection," added the man of the world, "it is a
polite synonym for tranquil indifference."

"Mr. Egerton," said Beatrice, "people say you are made of bronze. Did
you ever feel the want of a home?"

"I answer you frankly," replied the statesman, "if I had not felt it, do
you think I should have been, and that I should be to the last, the
joyless drudge of public life? Bronze though you call my nature, it
would have melted away long since like wax in the fire, if I had sat idly
down and dreamed of a home!"

"But we women," answered Beatrice, with pathos, "have no public life, and
we do idly sit down and dream. Oh," she continued, after a short pause,
and clasping her hands firmly together, "you think me worldly, grasping,
ambitious; how different my fate had been had I known a home!--known one
whom I could love and venerate; known one whose smiles would have
developed the good that was once within me, and the fear of whose
rebuking or sorrowful eye would have corrected what is evil."

"Yet," answered Audley, "nearly all women in the great world have had
that choice once in their lives, and nearly all have thrown it away. How
few of your rank really think of home when they marry! how few ask to