"I have been dying to see you," said the beauty, "for I knew, of course, you were completely au desespoir; that wretched paragraph would destroy your nerves."
"Not in the least; I saw it was an abbreviation from the first annunciation of the marriage, as communicated by the earl of Rotheles; here it is."
Lady Penrhyn glanced her eye over the paper, and said, "Could you spare me this, just to shew Penrhyn? The fact is, he is perfectly lost for want of Charles, and, of course, very cross; which was the reason I could not get to you before; and, in the course of his pets and his papers, he has really gone abominable lengths in abusing the poor fellow for making such a low connection."
"Low connection!—low!" cried Lady Anne, with an absolute shriek; "the granddaughter of the Earl of Rotheles termed low by a baron of two descents! this is beyond bearing."
"Not low, my dear creature; that is not the word; but imprudent, poor, a mere love-match, a positive irremediable, ruinous affair."
"The Earl of Rotheles is of a very different way of thinking; he supposes that a young man, with next to nothing, that marries a young woman of family, who takes him from the beggary of dependence and secures him an increasing income, which begins with a thousand per ann., may be termed ‘a fortunate youth.’ "
"But, supposing this is the case, the income is derived from trade; it is the consequence of degradation."
