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some house, horses, style and all its elegancies; yet you yourself have found no happiness in them." "But I never should find happiness out of them," answered Caroline. "It is a pretty amusement for us who have the gold to buy our pleasures with, to abuse it and speak ill of it. But those who have not it,--you do not hear them depreciate it so. I believe they would sell out their home-evenings, those simple enjoyments books speak of and describe so well,--they would sell them as gladly as the author sells his descriptions of them, for our equipages, our grand houses, our toilet." Arnold looked at his neighbor. Her hands, in their exquisitely fitting lilac gloves, lay carelessly across each other above the folds of the dress with which they harmonized perfectly. A little sweetbrier rose fell out from the white lace about her face, against the soft brown of her hair. Arnold pictured Laura gathering just such a rose from the porch she had described by the door of her country-home. "Would you not have enjoyed gathering yourself that delicate rose that looks coquettish out of its simplicity?" he asked. "Thank you, no," Caroline interrupted. "I selected it from Madame's Paris bonnets, because it suited my complexion. If I had picked the rose in the sun, don't you see my complexion would no longer have suited it?" "I see you would enjoy life merely as a looker-on," said Arnold. "I would prefer to be an actor in it. When I have built my own house, and have digged my own potatoes, I shall know the meaning of house and potatoes. My wife, meanwhile, will be picking the roses for her hair." "She will be learning the meaning of potatoes in cooking them," replied Caroline. "I would, indeed, rather be above life than in it. I have just enjoyed hearing Lucia sing her last song, and seeing Edgardo kill himself. I should not care to commit either folly myself. I pity people that have no money; I think they would as gladly hurry out of their restraints as Brignoli hurries into his everyday suit, after killing himself nightly as love-sick tenor." "I would rather kill myself than think so," said Arnold. This talk, which had been interrupted by the course of the opera, was finished as they left their seats. At the door, Mr. Gresham offered to help Caroline to her carriage. Arnold walked away. "I would kill myself, if I could fancy that Laura thought so," he said, as he hurried home. There was a cart at the door of the hou
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