"You have told me hundreds of times that I must never show off my knowledge after other people have displayed their ignorance; and that I must not even be obtrusively polite after they have been obviously rude.

Those are your very words, Cousin Maria: you see I can give chapter and verse." "And I meant what I said, my dear.

Wider knowledge and higher breeding are signs of actual superiority, and therefore should never be flaunted.
The vulgarity in the woman I am speaking about lay in imagining that there is any superiority in having more money than another person: there is not.

To hide the difference proved that she thought there was a difference, and this proved that her standpoint was an essentially plebeian one.

There was no difference at all, save one of convenience; the same sort of difference there is between people who have hot water laid on all over their houses and those who have to carry it upstairs.
And who would be so trivial and commonplace as to talk about that ?" Elisabeth, seeing that her cousin was in the right, wisely changed the subject.