"Why indeed," returned Lady Bellair, "but that people sink to their
fortunes! Blue blood won't keep them out of the gutter."
The remark was true, but of more general application than she
intended, seeing she herself was in the gutter and did not know
it. She spoke only of what followed on marriage beneath one's natal
position, than which she declared there was nothing worse a woman
of rank could do.
"She may get over anything but that," she would say, believing,
but not saying, that she spoke from experience.
Was it part of the late marquis's purgatory to see now, as the natural
result of the sins of his youth, the daughter whose innocence was
dear to him exposed to all the undermining influences of this good
natured but low moralled woman, whose ideas of the most mysterious
relations of humanity were in no respect higher than those of a
class which must not even be mentioned in my pages? At such tales
the high born heart would flutter in Florimel's bosom, beat itself
against its bars, turn sick at the sight of its danger, imagine
it had been cherishing a crime, and resolve--soon--before very
long--at length--finally--to break so far at least with the
painter as to limit their intercourse to the radiation of her power
across a dinner table, the rhythmic heaving of their two hearts at
a dance, or the quiet occasional talk in a corner, when the looks
of each would reveal to the other that they knew themselves the
martyrs of a cruel and inexorable law.
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