The tone of high excitement in which he spoke plainly revealed how far a nervous temperament and a susceptible nature had to do with his present resolve. Nelly had seen this before, but never so fully revealed as now. She knew well the springs which could move him to acts of self-sacrifice and devotion, but she had not thoroughly realized to herself that it was in a paroxysm of honorable emotion he had determined to accept the reverse of fortune, which would leave him penniless in the world.
"No, Nelly!" said he, as he arose and walked the room, with head erect, and a firm step. "We shall not suffer these people who talk slightingly of the newly risen gentry to have their scoff unchallenged! It is the cant of the day to talk of mercantile honor and City notions of what is high-minded and right, and I shall show them that _we_--'Lombard Street people,' as some newspaper scribe called us the other day--that we can do things the proudest earl in the peerage would shrink back from as from a sacrifice he could not dare to face. There can be no sneer at a class that can produce men who accept beggary rather than dishonor. As that Frenchman said, these habits of luxury and splendor were things he had never known,--the want of them would leave no blank in _his_ existence. Whereas to us they were the daily accidents of life; they entered into our ways and habits, and made part of our very natures; giving them up was like giving up ourselves,--surrendering an actual identity. You saw our distinguished connection, Lord Culduff, how he replied to my letter,--a letter, by the way, I should never have stooped to write; but Sedley had my ear at the time, and influenced me against my own convictions. The noble Viscount, however, was free from all extraneous pressure, and he told us as plainly as words could tell it, that he had paid heavily enough already for the honor of being connected with us, and had no intention to contribute another sacrifice. As for Temple,--I won't speak of him; poor Jack, how differently he would have behaved in such a crisis."
Happy at the opportunity to draw her brother away, even passingly, from a theme that seemed to press upon him unceasingly, she drew from the drawer of a little work-table a small photograph, and handed it to him, saying, "Is it not like?"