d hearing sent the word reverberating along her nerves
and shocked her with such an exposure of our Shaggy wild one on a lady's
lips. She murmured: 'Forgive me,' and had the passion to repeat the
epithet in shrieks, and scratch up male speech for a hatefuller; but the
twitch of Nesta's brows made her say: 'Do pardon me. I did something in
Scripture. Judith could again. Since that brute Worrell crossed me riding
with you, I loathe my name; I want to do things. I have offended you.'

'We have been taught differently. I do not use those words. Nothing
else.'

'They frighten you.'

'They make me shut; that is all.'

'Supposing you were some day to discover . . . ta-tata, all the things
there are in the world.' Mrs. Marsett let fly an artificial chirrup. 'You
must have some ideas of me.'

'I think you have had unhappy experiences.'

'Nesta . . . just now and then! the first time we rode out together,
coming back from the downs, I remember, I spoke, without thinking--I was
enraged--of a case in the newspapers; and you had seen it, and you were
not afraid to talk of it. I remember I thought, Well, for a girl, she's
bold! I thought you knew more than a girl ought to know: until--you
did--you set my heart going. You spoke of the poor women like an angel of
compassion. You said, we were all mixed up with their fate--I forget the
words. But no one ever heard in Church anything that touched me so. I
worshipped you. You said, you thought of them often, and longed to find
out what you could do to help. And I thought, if they could hear you, and
only come near you, as I was--ah, my heaven! Unhappy experiences? Yes.
But when men get women on the slope to their perdition, they have no
mercy, none. They deceive, and they lie; they are false in acts and
words; they do as much as murder. They're never hanged for it. They make
the Laws! And then they become fathers of families, and point the finger
at the "wretched creatures." They have a dozen names against women, for
one at themselves.'

'It maddens me at times to think . . . !' said Nesta, burning with the
sting of vile names.

Oh, there are bad women as well as bad men: but men have the power and
the lead, and they take advantage of it; and then they turn round and
execrate us for not having what they have robbed us of!'

'I blame women--if I may dare, at my age,' said Nesta, and her bosom
heaved. 'Women should feel for their sex; they should not allow the
names; they should