'Oh, Ida, how can you say so? You can't know which you will like best.'
'My likes and dislikes have nothing to do with it. I am going to marry for money.'
Miss Rylance had brought her desk to that end of the table where the two girls were sitting, during the latter part of the conversation. It was evening, the hour or so of leisure allowed for the preparation of studies and the writing of home letters. Miss Rylance unlocked her desk, and took out her paper and pens; but, having got so far as this, she seemed rather inclined to join in the conversation than to begin her letter.
'Isn't that rather a worldly idea for your time of life?' she asked, looking at Ida with her usual unfriendly expression.
'No doubt. I should be disgusted if you or Bessie entertained such a notion. But in me it is only natural. I have drained the cup of poverty to the dregs. I thirst for the nectar of wealth. I would marry a soap-boiler, a linseed-crusher, a self-educated navvy who had developed into a great contractor—any plebian creature, always provided that he was an honest man.'
'How condescending!' said Miss Rylance. 'I suppose, Bessie, you know that Miss Pew has especially forbidden us all to indulge in idle talk about courtship and marriage?'
'Quite so,' said Bessie; 'but as old Pew knows that we are human, I've no doubt she is quite aware that this is one of her numerous rules which we diligently set at nought.'
Urania began her letter, but although her pen moved swiftly over her paper in that elegant Italian hand which was, as it were, a badge of honour at Mauleverer Manor, her ears were not the less open to the conversation going on close beside her.
'Marry a soap-boiler, indeed!' exclaimed Bessie, indignantly; 'you ought to be a duchess!'
'No doubt, dear, if dukes went about the world, like King Cophetua, on the look out for beggar-maids.'