Hammond is
able to give her a decent home. It would be so dreadful to have a sister
muddling in poverty, and clamouring for one's cast-off gowns.'
Maulevrier laughed at this gloomy suggestion.
'It is not easy to foretell the future,' he said, 'but I think I may
venture to promise that Molly will never wear your cast-off gowns.'
'Oh, you think she would be too proud. You don't know, perhaps, how
poverty--genteel poverty--lowers one's pride. I have heard stories from
Lady Kirkbank that would make your hair stand on end. I am beginning to
know the world.'
'I am glad of that. If you are to live in the world it is better that
you should know what it is made of. But if I had a voice or a choice in
the matter I had rather my sisters stayed at Grasmere, and remained
ignorant of the world and all its ways.'
'While you enjoy your life in London. That is just like the selfishness
of a man. Under the pretence of keeping his sisters or his wife secure
from all possible contact with evil, he buries them alive in a country
house, while he has all the wickedness for his own share in London.
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