into ladies and gentlemen, all by battening on the vice and misery of
this wretched population. Those unhappy men and women are lured into the
gaudy palaces at the corners of the streets to purchase a moment's
oblivion of conscience, by stinting their children of bread, that we may
wear fine clothes, and call ourselves county people.'

'Do not talk so, Robert,' she exclaimed, trembling; 'it cannot be right
to say such things--'

'It is only the bare fact! it is no pleasure to me to accuse my own
father, I assure you, Phoebe, but I cannot blind myself to the simple
truth.'

'He cannot see it in that light.'

'He _will_ not.'

'Surely,' faltered Phoebe, 'it cannot be so bad when one does not know it
is--'

'So far true. The conscience does not waken quickly to evils with which
our lives have been long familiar.'

'And Mervyn was brought up to it--'

'That is not my concern,' said Robert, too much in the tone of 'Am I my
brother's keeper?'

'You will at least tell your reasons for refusing.'

'Yes, and much I shall be heeded! However, my own hands shall be pure
from the wages of iniquity. I am thankful that all I have comes from the
Mervyns.'

'It is a comfort, at least, that you see your way.'

'I suppose it is;' but he sighed heavily, with a sense that it was almost
profanation to have set such a profession in the balance against the
sacred ministry.

'I know _she_ will like it best.'

Dear Phoebe! in spite of Miss Fennimore, faith must still have been much
stronger than reason if she could detect the model parsoness in yonder
firefly.

Poor child, she went to bed, pondering over her brother's terrible
discoveries, and feeling as though she had suddenly awakened to find
herself implicated in a web of iniquity; her delightful parcel of
purchases lost their charms, and oppressed her as she thought of them in
connection with the rags of the squalid children the rector had
described, and she felt as if there were no escape, and she could never
be happy again under the knowledge of the price of her luxuries, and the
dread of judgment. 'Much good had their wealth done them,' as Robert
truly said. The house of Beauchamp had never been nearly so happy as if
their means had been moderate. Always paying court to their own station,
or they were disunited among themselves, and not yet amalgamated with the
society to which they had attained, the younger ones passing their elders
in cultivation, and every