The things we do!

Have we arranged a
correspondence? We are cousins, you know; we may write pretty cousinly
letters to one another." A month before the old lady would have attacked
her with other arms than sarcasm, but she was scared now, and dared to
use no coarser weapons. "Oh!" cried Ethel in a transport, "what a life
ours is, and how you buy and sell, and haggle over your children! It is
not Clive I care about, poor boy. Our ways of life are separate. I cannot
break from my own family, and I know very well how yon would receive him
in it. Had he money, it would be different. You would receive him, and
welcome him, and hold out your hands to him; but he is only a poor
painter, and we forsooth are bankers in the City; and he comes among us
on sufferance, like those concert-singers whom mamma treats with so much
politeness, and who go down and have supper by themselves. Why should
they not be as good as we are?"
"M. de C----, my dear, is of a noble family," interposed Lady Kew; "when
he has given up singing and made his fortune, no doubt he can go back
into the world again.


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