y.'

'But surely you have not written every one of those ribald verses?'

Ethelberta looked inclined to exclaim most vehemently against this; but
what she actually did say was, '"Ribald"--what do you mean by that? I
don't think that you are aware what "ribald" means.'

'I am not sure that I am. As regards some words as well as some persons,
the less you are acquainted with them the more it is to your credit.'

'I don't quite deserve this, Lady Petherwin.'

'Really, one would imagine that women wrote their books during those
dreams in which people have no moral sense, to see how improper some,
even virtuous, ladies become when they get into print.'

'I might have done a much more unnatural thing than write those poems.
And perhaps I might have done a much better thing, and got less praise.
But that's the world's fault, not mine.'

'You might have left them unwritten, and shown more fidelity.'

'Fidelity! it is more a matter of humour than principle. What has
fidelity to do with it?'

'Fidelity to my dear boy's memory.'

'It would be difficult to show that because I have written so-called
tender and gay verse, I feel tender and gay. It is too often assumed
that a person's fancy is a person's real mind. I believe that in the
majority of cases one is fond of imagining the direct opposite of one's
principles in sheer effort after something fresh and free; at any rate,
some of the lightest of those rhymes were composed between the deepest
fits of dismals I have ever known. However, I did expect that you might
judge in the way you have judged, and that was my chief reason for not
telling you what I had done.'

'You don't deny that you tried to escape from recollections you ought to
have cherished? There is only one thing that women of your sort are as
ready to do as to take a man's name, and that is, drop his memory.'

'Dear Lady Petherwin--don't be so unreasonable as to blame a live person
for living! No woman's head is so small as to be filled for life by a
memory of a few months. Four years have passed since I last saw my boy-
husband. We were mere children; see how I have altered since in mind,
substance, and outline--I have even grown half an inch taller since his
death. Two years will exhaust the regrets of widows who have long been
faithful wives; and ought I not to show a little new life when my husband
died in the honeymoon?'

'No. Accepting the protection of your husband's mother was, in eff