with
civilities, that I long to proclaim myself little Clara Frost, bred up
for a governess, and the laughing-stock of her school. Oh! for that
first ball where no one danced with me but Mr. Richardson, and I was
not a mere peg for the display of Uncle Oliver's Peruvian jewels! I
have all the trouble in the world to be allowed to go about fit to be
seen, and only by means of great fighting and coaxing did I prevail to
have my dress only from London instead of Paris.

'And no wonder I shivered all the way to the ball. Fancy Jane
insisting on my going to display my dress to that poor dying Marianne;
I was shocked at the notion of carrying my frivolities into such a
scene, but Jane said her mind ran on it, and it was 'anything to take
off her thoughts from that man.' So I went into her room, and oh! if
you could have seen the poor thing, with her short breath and racking
cough, her cheeks burning and her eyes glistening at that flimsy
trumpery. One bunch of the silver flowers on my skirt was wrong; she
spied it, and they would not thwart her, so she would have the needle,
and the skeleton trembling fingers set them right. They said she would
sleep the easier for it, and she thanked me as if it had really set her
more at rest; but how sad, how strange it seems, when she knows that
she is sinking fast, and has had Mr. Danvers with her every day. He
thinks all is well with her; but it was a melancholy, blank, untaught
mind, to begin to work on. Louis would call her life a mournful
picture of our civilization. She has told it all to Jane: she was of
the mechanic class, just above the rank that goes to Sunday-schools;
she went to a genteel weekly school, and was taken out pleasuring on
Sunday--no ground-work at all. An orphan at fifteen, she never again
knew tenderness. Then came dressmaking till her health failed, and she
tried service. She says, Isabel's soft tones made a paradise for her;
but late hours, which she did not feel at the time, wore her out, and
Delaford trifled with her. Always when alone he pretended devotion to
her, then flirted with any other who came in his way, and worry and
fretting put the finish to her failing health. She had no spirit to
break entirely with him, and even now is pining for one kind word,
which he seems to be too hard and selfish to send to her, in answer to
a letter of forgiveness that she wrote a fortnight back. What a wretch
he must be! Jane says, he tried flirting with