ed and right, and I shall show them that _we_--'Lombard Street
people,' as some newspaper scribe called us the other day--that we can
do things the proudest earl in the peerage would shrink back from as
from a sacrifice he could not dare to face. There can be no sneer at a
class that can produce men who accept beggary rather than dishonor. As
that Frenchman said, these habits of luxury and splendor were things
he had never known,--the want of them would leave no blank in _his_
existence. Whereas to us they were the daily accidents of life; they
entered into our ways and habits, and made part of our very natures;
giving them up was like giving up ourselves,--surrendering an actual
identity. You saw our distinguished connection, Lord Culduff, how he
replied to my letter,--a letter, by the way, I should never have stooped
to write; but Sedley had my ear at the time, and influenced me against
my own convictions. The noble Viscount, however, was free from all
extraneous pressure, and he told us as plainly as words could tell it,
that he had paid heavily enough already for the honor of being connected
with us, and had no intention to contribute another sacrifice. As for
Temple,--I won't speak of him; poor Jack, how differently he would have
behaved in such a crisis."

Happy at the opportunity to draw her brother away, even passingly, from
a theme that seemed to press upon him unceasingly, she drew from the
drawer of a little work-table a small photograph, and handed it to him,
saying, "Is it not like?"

"Jack!" cried he. "In a sailor's jacket, too! What is this?"

"He goes out as a mate to China," said she, calmly. "He wrote me but
half a dozen lines, but they were full of hope and cheerfulness. He said
that he had every prospect of getting a ship, when he was once out;
that an old messmate had written to his father--a great merchant at
Shanghai--about him, and that he had not the slightest fears for his
future."

"Would any one believe in a reverse so complete as this?" cried
Augustus, as he clasped his hands before him. "Who ever heard of such
ruin in so short a time?"

"Jack certainly takes no despairing view of life," said she, quietly.

"What! does he pretend to say it is nothing to descend from his rank
as an officer of the navy, with a brilliant prospect before him, and an
affluent connection at his back, to be a common sailor, or, at best, one
grade removed from a common sailor, and his whole family beggared? Is