“But, father,” replied the young man, his face turning pale, “I cannot, possibly, make up the deficiency.  Our rent alone, you know, is four hundred dollars.”

“I am aware of that, Charles.  But what then?  You must get a house at one half that rent, and reduce your style of living, proportionably, in other respects.”

“What!  And compromise my standing in society?  I can never do that, father.”

“Charles,” said the old man, looking at his son with a sterner countenance than he had ever yet put on when speaking to him, “remember that you have no standing in society which you can truly call your own.  I have, heretofore, held you up, and now that my sustaining hand is about to be withdrawn, you must fall or rise to your own level.  And I am satisfied, that the sooner you are permitted to do so the better.”

The fact was, that the selfish, and to old Mr. Fenwick, the heartless manner in which Charles had received the communication of his changed circumstances, had wounded him exceedingly, and suddenly opened his eyes to the false relation which his son was holding to society.

“You certainly cannot be in earnest, father,” the son replied, after a few moments of hurried and painful thought, “in declaring your intention of throwing me off with a meagre pittance of four hundred dollars, before I have had a chance to do any thing for myself.  How can I possibly get along on that sum?”

“I do not expect you to live on that, Charles.  But the difference you will have to make up yourself.  You have talents and acquirements.  Bring them into useful activity, and you will need little of my assistance.  As for me, as I have already told you, the tide of success is against me, and I am gradually moving down the stream.  Four hundred dollars is the extent of what I can give you, and how long the ability to do that may last, Heaven only knows.”

Reluctantly the young couple were compelled to give up their elegantly arranged dwelling, and move into a house of about one half of its dimensions.  In this there was a fixed, cold, common place reality, that shocked the sensibilities of both even though throughout the progress of the change, each had remained passive in the hands of the elder Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick, who had to choose them a house, and attend to all the arrangements of moving and refitting the new home.  For Charles to have engaged in the vulgar business of moving household furniture, would have been felt as a disgrace;—­and as for Adelaide, she didn’t know how to do any thing in regard to the matter, and even if she had, would have esteemed such an employment as entirely beneath her.

While the packing up was going on under the direction of her husband’s mother, Adelaide, half dressed, with an elegant shawl thrown carelessly about her shoulders, her feet drawn up and her body reclining upon a sofa, was deeply buried in the last new novel, while her babe lay in the arms of a nurse, who was thus prevented from rendering any assistance to those engaged in preparing the furniture for removal.  As for her husband, he was away, in some professional friend’s office, holding a learned discussion upon the relative merits of Byron and Shelley.