"But I don't think," said Florence, "that a graceful use of things is consistent with such a careful valuation and considering of the exact worth of everything it's not my idea of grace."
"Yet propriety is an essential element of gracefulness, Miss
Evelyn."
"Well," said Florence, "certainly; but what then?"
"Is it attainable, in the use of means, without a nice knowledge of their true value?"
"But, Mr. Carleton, I am sure I have seen improper things things improper in a way gracefully done?"
"No doubt; but, Miss Evelyn," said he, smiling, "the impropriety did not in those cases, I presume, attach itself to the other quality. The graceful manner was strictly proper to its ends, was it not, however the ends might be false?"
"I don't know," said Florence, "you have gone too deep for me. But do you think that close calculation, and all that sort of thing, is likely to make people use money, or anything else, gracefully? I never thought it did."
"Not close calculation alone," said Mr. Carleton.
"But do you think it is consistent with gracefulness?"
"The largest and grandest views of material things that man has ever taken, Miss Evelyn, stand upon a basis of the closest calculation."