orn. "Work! Pray what can we do
in the way of work? What kind of education have we had? The village
school-mistress could make us look very small in the matter of geography
and history. We have not been trained to work, and, let me tell you,
May, unskilled labor does not pay in these days."

"I am sure you can do anything, Adelaide, and I will teach singing. I
can sing."

"Pooh! Do you suppose that because you can take C in alt. you are
competent to teach singing? You don't know how to sing yourself yet.
Your face is your fortune. So is mine my fortune. So is Stella's her
fortune. You have enjoyed yourself all your life; you have had seventeen
years of play and amusement, and now you behave like a baby. You refuse
to endure a little discomfort, as the price of placing yourself and your
family forever out of the reach of trouble and trial. Why, if you were
Sir Peter's wife, you could do what you liked with him. I don't say
anything about myself; but oh! May, I am ashamed of you, I am ashamed of
you! I thought you had more in you. Is it possible that you are nothing
but a romp--nothing but a vulgar tomboy? Good Heaven! If the chance had
been mine!"

"What would you have done?" I whispered, subdued for the moment, but
obstinate in my heart as ever.

"I am nobody now; no one knows me. But if I had had the chance that you
have had to-night, in another year I would have been known and envied by
half the women in England. Bah! Circumstances are too disgusting, too
unkind!"

"Oh! Adelaide, nothing could have made up for being tied to that man,"
said I, in a small voice; "and I am not ambitious."

"Ambitious! You are selfish--downright, grossly, inordinately selfish.
Do you suppose no one else ever had to do what they did not like? Why
did you not stop to think instead of rushing away from the thing like
some unreasoning animal?"

"Adelaide! Sir Peter! To marry him?" I implored in tears. "How could I?
I should die of shame at the very thought. Who could help seeing that I
had sold myself to him?"

"And who would think any the worse of you? And what if they did? With
fifteen thousand a year you may defy public opinion."

"Oh, don't! don't!" I cried, covering my face with my hands. "Adelaide,
you will break my heart!"

Burying my face in the bed-quilt, I sobbed irrepressibly. Adelaide's
apparent unconsciousness of, or callousness to, the stabs she was giving
me, and the anguish they caused me, almost distracted me.