Fleda smiled and hesitated again, in a way that shewed she would willingly be excused, but the silence left her no choice but to speak.
"I think," she said modestly, "that a person can hardly understand the true worth of money,--the ends it can best subserve,--that has not been taught it by his own experience of the want; and--"
"What follows?" said Mr. Carleton.
"I was going to say, sir, that there is danger, especially when people have not been accustomed to it, that they will greatly overvalue and misplace the real worth of prosperity; unless the mind has been steadied by another kind of experience, and has learnt to measure things by a higher scale."
"And how when they have been accustomed to it?" said Florence.
"The same danger, without the 'especially'," said Fleda, with a look that disclaimed any assuming.
"One thing is certain," said Constance,--"you hardly ever see les nouveaux riches make a graceful use of anything.--Fleda my dear, I am seconding all of your last speech that I understand. Mamma, I perceive, is at work upon the rest."
"I think we ought all to be at work upon it," said Mrs. Evelyn, "for Miss Ringgan has made it out that there is hardly anybody here that is qualified to wear prosperity well."
"I was just thinking so," said Florence.
Fleda said nothing, and perhaps her colour rose a little.