proving your
condition; and this may be an opening that I ought not to reject. What
say you, Betty?"

"If I were to send her out into the world, I had rather bind her
apprentice to the Misses Rigby to learn mantua-making."

"Nay, nay, my dear; so long as I live there is no need for my children
to come to such straits."

"As long as you retain your situation, sir; but you perceive how my Lady
concludes her letter."

"An old song, Betty, which she sings whenever the coin does not come
in fast enough to content her. She does not mean what she says; I know
Urania of old. No; I will write back to her, thanking her for her good
offices, but telling her my little girl is too young to be launched
into the world as yet. Though if it were Harriet, she might not be
unwilling."

"Harriet would be transported at the idea; but it is not she whom the
Lady wants. And indeed I had rather trust little Aurelia to take care of
herself than poor Harriet."

"We shall see! We shall see! Meantime, do not broach the subject to your
sisters."

Betty assented, and departed with a heavy heart, feeling that, whatever
her father might believe, the choice would be between the sacrifice of
Aurelia or of her father's agency, which would involve the loss of
home, of competence, and of the power of breeding up her darling Eugene
according to his birth. She did not even know what her father had
written, and could only go about her daily occupations like one under a
weight, listening to her sisters' prattle about their little plans with
a strange sense that everything was coming to an end, and constantly
weighing the comparative evils of yielding or refusing Aurelia.

No one would have more valiantly faced poverty than Elizabeth Delavie,
had she alone been concerned. Cavalier and Jacobite blood was in her
veins, and her unselfish character had been trained by a staunch and
self-devoted mother. But her father's age and Eugene's youth made her
waver. She might work her fingers to the bone, and live on oatmeal, to
give her father the comforts he required; but to have Eugene brought
down from his natural station was more than she could endure. His
welfare must be secured at the cost not only of Aurelia's sweet
presence, but of her happiness; and Betty durst not ask herself what
more she dreaded, knowing too that she would probably be quite incapable
of altering her father's determination whatever it might be, and that he
was inclined to trust Lady B