tion of Marriage was eyed. Is it not a
halting step to happiness? It is the step of a cripple,--and one leg or
the other poses for the feebler sex,--small is the matter which! And is
happiness our cry? Our cry is rather for circumstance and occasion to use
our functions, and the conditions are denied to women by Marriage--denied
to the luckless of women, who are many, very many: denied to Aminta,
calling herself Countess of Ormont, for one, denied to Mrs. Lawrence
Finchley for another, and in a base bad manner. She had defended her good
name triumphantly, only to enslave herself for life or snatch at the
liberty which besmirches.

Reviewing Mrs. Lawrence, Aminta's real heart pressed forward at the beat,
in tender pity of the woman for whom a yielding to love was to sin; and
unwomanly is the woman who does not love: men will say it. Aminta found
herself phrasing. 'Why was she unable to love her husband?--he is not
old.' She hurried in flight from the remark to confidences imparted by
other ladies, showing strange veins in an earthy world; after which, her
mind was bent to rebuke Mrs. Pagnell for the silly soul's perpetual
allusions to Lord Ormont's age. She did not think of his age. But she was
vividly thinking that she was young. Young, married, loveless, cramped in
her energies, publicly dishonoured--a Lady Doubtful, courting one friend
whom she liked among women, one friend whom she respected among men; that
was the sketch of her.

That was in truth the outline, as much as Aminta dared sketch of herself
without dragging her down lower than her trained instinct would bear to
look. Our civilization shuns nature; and most shuns it in the most
artificially civilized, to suit the market. They, however, are always
close to their mother nature, beneath their second nature's mask of
custom; and Aminta's unconscious concluding touch to the sketch: 'My
husband might have helped me to a footing in Society,' would complete it
as a coloured picture, if writ in tones.

She said it, and for the footing in Society she had lost her taste.

Mrs. Lawrence brought the final word from high quarters: that the
application must be deferred until Lord Ormont returned to town. It was
known before, that such would be the decision. She had it from the
eminent official himself, and she kicked about the room, setting her
pretty mouth and nose to pout and sniff, exactly like a boy whose chum
has been mishandled by a bully.

'Your dear good man