Besides, ruin
in fashionable life is accompanied by so many galling
mortifications, to which, in other ranks, it is a stranger. In
short, I could not meet Leslie, the next morning, without
trepidation. He had made the disclosure.
"And how did she bear it?"
"Like an angel! It seemed rather to be a relief to her mind, for
she threw her arms around my neck, and asked if this was all that
had lately made me unhappy.--But, poor girl," added he, "she
cannot realize the change we must undergo. She has no idea of
poverty but in the abstract; she has only read of it in poetry,
where it is allied to love. She feels as yet no privation; she
suffers no loss of accustomed conveniences nor elegancies. When
we come practically to experience its sordid cares, its paltry
wants, its petty humiliations--then will be the real trial."
"But," said I, "now that you have got over the severest task,
that of breaking it to her, the sooner you let the world into the
secret the better. The disclosure may be mortifying; but then it
is a single misery, and soon over: whereas you otherwise suffer
it, in anticipation, every hour in the day. It is not poverty, so
much as pretence, that harasses a ruined man--the struggle
between a proud mind and an empty purse-the keeping up a hollow
show that must soon come to an end.
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