ambition, as a noble passion, would be elicited. How have I been disappointed!"
"Don't say so, mamma; every body last night said how happy you were in your family; how few mothers could show three daughters so charming and so well married, and a fourth engaged to the most promising man in the country!"
"So they may well say, when they look round and see what other dowagers have done; but yet, Helen, they have not done well in accordance with my system; or, in consequence of it, every one of them in her turn have admitted the weakness of love; not one has risen in consequence of her ambition. The two who have done well, have been even more attached than the two who have done poorly; and the one who married a man twenty years her senior, loves him the most entirely and exclusively:—how strange!"
"Remember, dear mamma, how fondly we all loved each other, finding in our sisters what other girls find in their mammas; besides, some people have the weakness you speak of naturally, uncle Rotheles, for instance; he has a very tender heart, so, indeed, has uncle Riccardini."
"But as it does not become women to imitate men, I advise you, Helen, to place my example before your eyes in preference to theirs; you are modest and pretty, be also free; do not "hold your
