!"

"You might say so of almost every state; there are abuses and prejudices
everywhere, and I thought fewer in England than in other countries."

"Come to England and see. Come to Birmingham and Manchester; come to St.
Giles' in London, and get a practical notion of how our system works.
Examine the footprints of our august aristocracy; see how they walk
in blood, crushing hearts as they go. Just put your head in at English
cottage doors; get a glimpse of Famine crouched torpid on black
hearthstones; of Disease lying bare on beds without coverlets, of
Infamy wantoning viciously with Ignorance, though indeed Luxury is her
favourite paramour, and princely halls are dearer to her than thatched
hovels----"

"I was not thinking of the wretchedness and vice in England; I was
thinking of the good side--of what is elevated in your character as a
nation."

"There is no good side--none at least of which you can have any
knowledge; for you cannot appreciate the efforts of industry, the
achievements of enterprise, or the discoveries of science: narrowness
of education and obscurity of position quite incapacitate you
from understanding these points; and as to historical and poetical
associations, I will not insult you, mademoiselle, by supposing that you
alluded to such humbug."

"But I did partly."

Hunsden laughed--his laugh of unmitigated scorn.

"I did, Mr. Hunsden. Are you of the number of those to whom such
associations give no pleasure?"

"Mademoiselle, what is an association? I never saw one. What is its
length, breadth, weight, value--ay, VALUE? What price will it bring in
the market?"

"Your portrait, to any one who loved you, would, for the sake of
association, be without price."

That inscrutable Hunsden heard this remark and felt it rather acutely,
too, somewhere; for he coloured--a thing not unusual with him, when hit
unawares on a tender point. A sort of trouble momentarily darkened
his eye, and I believe he filled up the transient pause succeeding his
antagonist's home-thrust, by a wish that some one did love him as
he would like to be loved--some one whose love he could unreservedly
return.

The lady pursued her temporary advantage.

"If your world is a world without associations, Mr. Hunsden, I no longer
wonder that you hate England so. I don't clearly know what Paradise is,
and what angels are; yet taking it to be the most glorious region I can
conceive, and angels the most elevated existences--i