lary elegance. The letter she used
to grasp at with a high-beating heart she now clutched with greater
eagerness, but in terror lest others should see and mark its vulgar
exterior!

How differently, too, did the contents affect her! So long as they
referred to herself, in her own latest narrative of her life, she
read with avidity and pleasure. Nelly's innocent wonderment was a very
delightful sensation; her affectionate participation in her happiness
was all grateful; even her gentle warnings against the seductions of
such a career were not unpleasing; but the subject changed to home, and
what an alteration came over her spirit! How dark and dismal became the
picture, how poverty-stricken each incident and event, what littleness in
every detail, how insignificant the occupations that interested them!

How great the surprise she felt at their interest in such trifles; how
astonished that their hopes and fears, their wishes or their dreads,
could take so mean a form! This came with peculiar force before her,
from a paragraph that closed Nelly's last letter, and which ran thus:

"Think of our happiness, dearest Kate! We have just seen one who saw
you lately, one of your Florence acquaintances; and I believe I might go
further and say friends, for the terms in which he spoke of you evinced
sincere and true regard. It was so kind of him to find us out, just to
come and tell us about you; indeed, he remained a day here for no other
purpose, since his diplomatic duties were urging him to England with
speed."

When Kate had read thus far, she stopped, her face and neck crimson with
shame, and her heart beating almost audibly. With lightning rapidity she
ran over to herself three or four names of ministers and envoys who
had lately left Florence, trembling to think it might be the gorgeous
Russian, Naradskoi, the princely Neapolitan, Carnporese, or the haughty
Spaniard, Don Hernandez Orloes, who had visited their humble interior.
What a humiliation for her, if she were ever to see them again! Home,
at that instant, presented itself before her but as the witness of her
shame: how sordid and miserable did its poverty appear, and with what
vulgarity associated! Her poor old father, around whose neck but a
moment before she would have hung with rapture, she shrank from with
very terror: his dress, his look, his accent every word he spoke, every
allusion he made, were tortures to her; and Nelly even Nelly how she
blushed to fanc