The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 22 Page 26

be no less kind than sisters are — to my poor Priscilla!”

And, it may be, after Zenobia withdrew, Fauntleroy paced his gloomy chamber, and communed with himself as follows, — or, at all events, it is the only solution which I can offer of the enigma presented in his character: — ”I am unchanged, — the same man as of yore!” said he.

“True, my brother’s wealth — he dying intestate — is legally my own. I know it; yet of my own choice, I live a beggar, and go meanly clad, and hide myself behind a forgotten ignominy. Looks this like ostentation? Ah! but in Zenobia I live again! Beholding her, so beautiful, — so fit to be adorned with all imaginable splendor of outward state, — the cursed vanity, which, half a