which I am not yet satisfied. During this sickness, she has been
constantly at Madeline's bedside--never were two people so fond of each
other as they have grown--and to tell you the truth, Nicholas, I have
rather kept her away now and then, because I think it's a good plan, and
urges a young man on. He doesn't get too sure, you know.'

She said this with such a mingling of high delight and
self-congratulation, that it was inexpressibly painful to Nicholas to
dash her hopes; but he felt that there was only one honourable course
before him, and that he was bound to take it.

'Dear mother,' he said kindly, 'don't you see that if there were really
any serious inclination on the part of Mr Frank towards Kate, and we
suffered ourselves for a moment to encourage it, we should be acting a
most dishonourable and ungrateful part? I ask you if you don't see it,
but I need not say that I know you don't, or you would have been more
strictly on your guard. Let me explain my meaning to you. Remember how
poor we are.'

Mrs Nickleby shook her head, and said, through her tears, that poverty
was not a crime.

'No,' said Nicholas, 'and for that reason poverty should engender an
honest pride, that it may not lead and tempt us to unworthy actions, and
that we may preserve the self-respect which a hewer of wood and drawer
of water may maintain, and does better in maintaining than a monarch in
preserving his. Think what we owe to these two brothers: remember what
they have done, and what they do every day for us with a generosity
and delicacy for which the devotion of our whole lives would be a most
imperfect and inadequate return. What kind of return would that be which
would be comprised in our permitting their nephew, their only relative,
whom they regard as a son, and for whom it would be mere childishness to
suppose they have not formed plans suitably adapted to the education he
has had, and the fortune he will inherit--in our permitting him to marry
a portionless girl: so closely connected with us, that the irresistible
inference must be, that he was entrapped by a plot; that it was a
deliberate scheme, and a speculation amongst us three? Bring the matter
clearly before yourself, mother. Now, how would you feel, if they were
married, and the brothers, coming here on one of those kind errands
which bring them here so often, you had to break out to them the truth?
Would you be at ease, and feel that you had played an open part?'

P