But she had never seen it.

The reality of her own life was too weak and colourless, by contrast, to make the name of fortune an excuse for the sordid facts of meanness.

There was no splendour about her, no wild gaiety, none of the glorious extravagance of conscious young wealth, and there was very little amusement to divert her thoughts.

The people she would have liked to know were kept at a distance from her.

She was advised not to buy the things which attracted her eyes, and was told that they were not so good as they looked, and that on the whole it was better to keep money than to spend it--but that, of course, she might do as she pleased, and that when she wanted money her uncle Macomer would give it to her.
It all passed through his hands, and he managed everything, with the assistance of Lamberto Squarci the notary and of other men of business--mostly shabby-looking men in black, with spectacles and unhealthy complexions, who came and went in the morning when old Macomer was in his study attending to affairs.