en her fate, she
explains, to bring suffering and misery upon those she loves. At first,
according to her own account, she rebelled against this cruel
Fate--possibly instigated thereto by the people unfortunate enough to be
loved by her. But of late she has come to accept this strange destiny of
hers with touching resignation. It grieves her, when she thinks of it,
that she is unable to imbue those she loves with her own patient spirit.
They seem to be a fretful little band.

Considered as a scapegoat, Fate, as compared with the father, has this
advantage: it is always about: it cannot slip away and die before the
real trouble begins: it cannot even plead a scientific head; it is there
all the time. With care one can blame it for most everything. The
vexing thing about it is, that it does not mind being blamed. One cannot
make Fate feel small and mean. It affords no relief to our harrowed
feelings to cry out indignantly to Fate: "look here, what you have done.
Look at this sweet and well-proportioned lady, compelled to travel first-
class, accompanied by an amount of luggage that must be a perpetual
nightmare to her maid, from one fashionable European resort to another;
forced to exist on a well-secured income of, apparently, five thousand a
year, most of which has to go in clothes; beloved by only the best people
in the play; talked about by everybody incessantly to the exclusion of
everybody else--all the neighbours interested in her and in nobody else
much; all the women envying her; all the men tumbling over one another
after her--looks, in spite of all her worries, not a day older than
twenty-three; and has discovered a dressmaker never yet known to have
been an hour behind her promise! And all your fault, yours, Fate. Will
nothing move you to shame?"

She has a way of mislaying her Husband.

It brings no satisfaction with it, speaking out one's mind to Fate. We
want to see him before us, the thing of flesh and blood that has brought
all this upon her. Was it that early husband--or rather the gentleman
she thought was her husband. As a matter of fact, he was a husband. Only
he did not happen to be hers. That naturally confused her. "Then who is
my husband?" she seems to have said to herself; "I had a husband: I
remember it distinctly."

"Difficult to know them apart from one another," says the lady with the
past, "the way they dress them all alike nowadays. I suppose it does not
really mat