and we're differing stars. No, I stick to my
text. To be only a commonly contented married woman, with the shelter
and freedom of a wife's position, with a house to keep, children and
servants to look after, and with a certain amount of social influence,
is better than to subside into a grim or fidgetty old maid in lodgings,
with a dog and three-volume novels to get through the days and years
with; to be snubbed and sneered at by men; to have, when one's hair is
white as time can make it, the privilege of walking meekly out to
dinner behind one's grand niece, a silly chit of eighteen, married a
twelvemonth--and nobody to care whether one lives or dies, unless
perhaps a Bath chair man.

"Matrimony's the only career for women in England, but we ought to be
trained for it on Gradgrind principles. As it is, we're far too
aesthetic and sentimental for the mates we must have--if any. Poetry and
the stories of fine, gracious, self-sacrificing lives ought to be
suppressed; they're ruinous reading for this nineteenth century." And
so on and on.

"There's reason for that poor girl's bitterness," said Mrs. Stainton
when we were again alone. "A dozen years ago, in her first and second
seasons out, a more charming creature it would have been hard to
find--ingenuous, sunny tempered, a dashing, sparkling blonde beauty,
full of Irish quickness and fun, and a favorite wherever she went.
Unluckily she met Ward Cotterell--now one of the editors of 'The
Phare'--then a radiant, double first, handsome, chivalric, but as poor
and debt-laden as he was clever, and the pair fell desperately in love.
Mrs. Dixon wouldn't let them call themselves engaged. She had crippled
her own fortune, and Kate had sacrificed a great part of her own
portion, to clear a spendthrift eldest son and brother of his
difficulties, and start him afresh in Ceylon, so that aid on their part
was impossible, and Cotterell, after a year or so's trying vainly in
this and that direction, for an income, gave up the struggle, married
an heiress, who paid his debts, brought him L40,000 then, and has
inherited since L60,000, and within six months after his marriage had
his place on the 'Phare' offered him, with a salary of L1,200 a year.
'What would I not have given a year ago for any sort of hard work that
would have made me sure of L500 a year?' he said to some friend who
knew the little story.

"Poor Kate kept up pretty well. 'What else _could_ he do?' she always
says. 'He