It would be a pleasure, I am sure, if I could do anything." Felicita's heart sank very low as she turned into the dismal street and trod the muddy pavement.

A few illusions shrivelled up that wintry morning under that murky sky.

The name she was so fearful of staining; the name she had fondly imagined as noised from mouth to mouth; the name for which she had demanded so great a sacrifice, and had sacrificed so much herself, was not known in those circles where she might most have expected to find it a passport to attention and esteem.

It had travelled very little indeed beyond the narrow sphere of Riversborough..