u permit it?
In the name of all dissonance, what can it be?"

It was very remarkable into what prominent relief--even as if a dim
picture should leap suddenly from its canvas--Clifford's character was
thrown by this apparently trifling annoyance. The secret was, that an
individual of his temper can always be pricked more acutely through his
sense of the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart. It is
even possible--for similar cases have often happened--that if Clifford,
in his foregoing life, had enjoyed the means of cultivating his taste
to its utmost perfectibility, that subtile attribute might, before this
period, have completely eaten out or filed away his affections. Shall
we venture to pronounce, therefore, that his long and black calamity
may not have had a redeeming drop of mercy at the bottom?

"Dear Clifford, I wish I could keep the sound from your ears," said
Hepzibah, patiently, but reddening with a painful suffusion of shame.
"It is very disagreeable even to me. But, do you know, Clifford, I
have something to tell you? This ugly noise,--pray run, Phoebe, and see
who is there!--this naughty little tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!"

"Shop-bell!" repeated Clifford, with a bewildered stare.

"Yes, our shop-bell," said Hepzibah, a certain natural dignity, mingled
with deep emotion, now asserting itself in her manner. "For you must
know, dearest Clifford, that we are very poor. And there was no other
resource, but either to accept assistance from a hand that I would push
aside (and so would you!) were it to offer bread when we were dying for
it,--no help, save from him, or else to earn our subsistence with my
own hands! Alone, I might have been content to starve. But you were to
be given back to me! Do you think, then, dear Clifford," added she,
with a wretched smile, "that I have brought an irretrievable disgrace
on the old house, by opening a little shop in the front gable? Our
great-great-grandfather did the same, when there was far less need! Are
you ashamed of me?"

"Shame! Disgrace! Do you speak these words to me, Hepzibah?" said
Clifford,--not angrily, however; for when a man's spirit has been
thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offences, but never
resentful of great ones. So he spoke with only a grieved emotion. "It
was not kind to say so, Hepzibah! What shame can befall me now?"

And then the unnerved man--he that had been born for enjoyment, but had
met a doom so v