in such a thing as that she had on her
head."

"Of course she wears a widow's cap, but she'll put that off when
Bertie marries her."

"I don't see any of course in it," said Madeline. "The death of
twenty husbands should not make me undergo such a penance. It is as
much a relic of paganism as the sacrifice of a Hindu woman at the
burning of her husband's body. If not so bloody, it is quite as
barbarous, and quite as useless."

"But you don't blame her for that," said Bertie. "She does it
because it's the custom of the country. People would think ill of
her if she didn't do it."

"Exactly," said Madeline. "She is just one of those English
nonentities who would tie her head up in a bag for three months every
summer, if her mother and her grandmother had tied up their heads
before her. It would never occur to her to think whether there was
any use in submitting to such a nuisance."

"It's very hard in a country like England, for a young woman to set
herself in opposition to prejudices of that sort," said the prudent
Charlotte.

"What you mean is that it's very hard for a fool not to be a fool,"
said Madeline.

Bertie Stanhope had been so much knocked about the world from his
earliest years that he had not retained much respect for the gravity
of English customs; but even to his mind an idea presented itself
that, perhaps in a wife, true British prejudice would not in the long
run be less agreeable than Anglo-Italian freedom from restraint. He
did not exactly say so, but he expressed the idea in another way.

"I fancy," said he, "that if I were to die, and then walk, I should
think that my widow looked better in one of those caps than any other
kind of head-dress."

"Yes--and you'd fancy also that she could do nothing better than shut
herself up and cry for you, or else burn herself. But she would think
differently. She'd probably wear one of those horrid she-helmets,
because she'd want the courage not to do so; but she'd wear it with a
heart longing for the time when she might be allowed to throw it off.
I hate such shallow false pretences. For my part I would let the world
say what it pleased, and show no grief if I felt none--and perhaps
not, if I did."

"But wearing a widow's cap won't lessen her fortune," said Charlotte.

"Or increase it," said Madeline. "Then why on earth does she do it?"

"But Lotte's object is to make her put it off," said Bertie.

"If it be true that she has got twelve hundred a