een anxious."

"Oh, no! it is chronic; there is no danger. But she requires a great
deal of attendance; and I like to come out when I can. Oh, how fine it
is! what colour! I think, Mr. May, you must have a _specialite_ for
sunsets at Carlingford. I never saw them so beautiful anywhere else."

"I am glad there is something you like in Carlingford."

"Something! there is a very great deal; and that I don't like too," she
said with a smile. "I don't care for the people I am living among,
which is dreadful. I don't suppose you have ever had such an experience,
though you must know a great deal more in other ways than I. All the
people that come to inquire about grandmamma are very kind; they are as
good as possible; I respect them, and all that, but----Well, it must be
my own fault, or education. It is education, no doubt, that gives us
those absurd ideas."

"Don't call them absurd," said Reginald, "indeed I can enter into them
perfectly well. I don't _know_ them, perhaps, in my own person; but I
can perfectly understand the repugnance, the distress--"

"The words are too strong," said Phoebe, "not so much as that;
the--annoyance, perhaps, the nasty disagreeable struggle with one's self
and one's pride; as if one were better than other people. I dislike
myself, and despise myself for it; but I can't help it. We have so
little power over ourselves."

"I hope you will let my sister do what she can to deliver you," said
Reginald; "Ursula is not like you; but she is a good little thing, and
she is able to appreciate you. I was to tell you she had been called
suddenly off to the Dorsets', with whom my father and she have gone to
pass the night--to meet, I believe, a person you know."

"Oh, Clarence Copperhead; he is come then? How odd it will be to see him
here. His mother is nice, but his father is----Oh, Mr. May! if you only
knew the things people have to put up with. When I think of Mr.
Copperhead, and his great, ugly, staring wealth, I feel disposed to hate
money--especially among Dissenters. It would be better if we were all
poor."

Reginald said nothing; he thought so too. In that case there would be a
few disagreeable things out of a poor clergyman's way, and assaults like
that of Northcote upon himself would be impossible; but he could
scarcely utter these virtuous sentiments.

"Poverty is the desire of ascetics, and this is not an ascetic age," he
said at length, with a half-laugh at himself for his stiff spee