"Oh! I understand: you mean to marry a rich man."
"I mean that only as a last resort. The world would think worse of me if I robbed a man of his fortune; but I should think worse of myself, and wrong him more, if I married him to obtain it. No, Helen, I shall not do that—if I can help it."
"But you would not be wronging him, Marion, if you loved him."
"And do you think," demanded the young cynic, "that one is likely to love the man it is best for one to marry?"
"Yes, I think so—I know so."
"Ah! well, perhaps it may be so to such a child of happy fate as you are, but it is never likely to occur to me."
"And is a fortune all that you mean to look for in life?" asked Helen.
"Why should I look for anything more? Does not that comprise everything? Ah! you have never known the bitterness of poverty, or you would not doubt that when one has fortune, one has all that is necessary for happiness."
"But I have known poverty," broke in Claire; "and I know, Marion, that there are many worse things in life than want of money, and many better things than possessing it."
"That is all you know about the matter," replied Marion, with an air of scorn. "Perhaps I, too, might be able to feel in that way, if I had known only the poverty that you have—a picturesque, Bohemian poverty, with no necessity to pretend to be what you were not. But genteel poverty, which must keep up appearances by a hundred makeshifts and embarrassments and meannesses—have you ever known that? It has been the experience of my life,—one which I shudder to recall, and which I would sooner die than go back to."