"I cannot answer for that--it is so easy to love Lucy, and to love her
warmly. I only know they visit her no longer, and, when they meet her
in society, behave just as I think a rejected admirer would behave,
when he has not lost his respect for his late flame. Mrs. Bradfort's
fortune and position may have had their influence on two; but the
others I think were quite sincere."
"Mrs. Bradfort is quite in a high set, Grace--altogether above what we
have been accustomed to?"
My sister coloured a little, and I could see she was not at her
ease. Still, Grace had too much self-respect, and too much character,
ever to feel an oppressive inferiority, where it did not exist in
essentials; and she had never been made to suffer, as the more
frivolous and vain often suffer, by communications with a class
superior to their own; especially when that class, as always happens,
contains those who, having nothing else to be proud of, take care to
make others feel their inferiority.
"This is true, Miles," she answered; "or I might better say, both are
true. Certainly I never have seen as many well-bred persons as I meet
in her circle--indeed, we have little around us at Clawbonny to teach
us any distinctions in such tastes. Mr. Hardinge, simple as he is, is
so truly a gentleman, that he has not left us altogether in the dark
as to what was expected of us; and I fancy the higher people truly are
in the world, the less they lay stress on anything but what is
substantial, in these matters.
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