'Is it not so?
Have I been made the bye-word of all kinds of men?
Have fools, have profligates, have boys, have dotards, dangled after me, and one by one rejected me, and fallen off, because you were too plain with all your cunning: yes, and too true, with all those false pretences: until we have almost come to be notorious?
The licence of look and touch,' she said, with flashing eyes, 'have I submitted to it, in half the places of resort upon the map of England?
Have I been hawked and vended here and there, until the last grain of self-respect is dead within me, and I loathe myself?
Has been my late childhood?
I had none before.

Do not tell me that I had, tonight of all nights in my life!' 'You might have been well married,' said her mother, 'twenty times at least, Edith, if you had given encouragement enough.' 'No! Who takes me, refuse that I am, and as I well deserve to be,' she answered, raising her head, and trembling in her energy of shame and stormy pride, 'shall take me, as this man does, with no art of mine put forth to lure him.

He sees me at the auction, and he thinks it well to buy me.

Let him! When he came to view me--perhaps to bid--he required to see the roll of my accomplishments.

I gave it to him.