re about me. 'I must go to
Doctors' Commons and read up wills of the parents of any likely gudgeons
I may know. I must get a Herald to invent an escutcheon of my family,
and throw a genealogical tree into the bargain in consideration of my
taking a few second-hand heirlooms of a pawnbroking friend of his. I
must get up sham ancestors, and find out some notorious name to start my
pedigree from. It does not matter what his character was; either villain
or martyr will do, provided that he lived five hundred years ago. It
would be considered far more creditable to make good my descent from
Satan in the age when he went to and fro on the earth than from a
ministering angel under Victoria.'

'But, Berta, you are not going to marry any stranger who may turn up?'
said Picotee, who had creeping sensations of dread when Ethelberta talked
like this.

'I had no such intention. But, having once put my hand to the plough,
how shall I turn back?'

'You might marry Mr. Ladywell,' said Picotee, who preferred to look at
things in the concrete.

'Yes, marry him villainously; in cold blood, without a moment to prepare
himself.'

'Ah, you won't!'

'I am not so sure about that. I have brought mother and the children to
town against her judgment and against my father's; they gave way to my
opinion as to one who from superior education has larger knowledge of the
world than they. I must prove my promises, even if Heaven should fall
upon me for it, or what a miserable future will theirs be! We must not
be poor in London. Poverty in the country is a sadness, but poverty in
town is a horror. There is something not without grandeur in the thought
of starvation on an open mountain or in a wide wood, and your bones lying
there to bleach in the pure sun and rain; but a back garret in a rookery,
and the other starvers in the room insisting on keeping the window
shut--anything to deliver us from that!'

'How gloomy you can be, Berta! It will never be so dreadful. Why, I can
take in plain sewing, and you can do translations, and mother can knit
stockings, and so on. How much longer will this house be yours?'

'Two years. If I keep it longer than that I shall have to pay rent at
the rate of three hundred a year. The Petherwin estate provides me with
it till then, which will be the end of Lady Petherwin's term.'

'I see it; and you ought to marry before the house is gone, if you mean
to marry high,' murmured Picotee, in an inade