ind
this!--don't presume to say 'my dear' to me again."

"It ain't presuming half far enough, is it? Wait a bit. Give me till the
race is run--and then I'll presume to marry you."

"You! You will be as old as Methuselah, if you wait till I am your wife.
I dare say Perry has got a sister. Suppose you ask him? She would be
just the right person for you."

Geoffrey gave the flower another turn in his teeth, and looked as if he
thought the idea worth considering.

"All right," he said. "Any thing to be agreeable to you. I'll ask
Perry."

He turned away, as if he was going to do it at once. Mrs. Glenarm put
out a little hand, ravishingly clothed in a blush-colored glove, and
laid it on the athlete's mighty arm. She pinched those iron muscles (the
pride and glory of England) gently. "What a man you are!" she said. "I
never met with any body like you before!"

The whole secret of the power that Geoffrey had acquired over her was in
those words.

They had been together at Swanhaven for little more than ten days; and
in that time he had made the conquest of Mrs. Glenarm. On the day
before the garden-party--in one of the leisure intervals allowed him by
Perry--he had caught her alone, had taken her by the arm, and had asked
her, in so many words, if she would marry him. Instances on record of
women who have been wooed and won in ten days are--to speak it with all
possible respect--not wanting. But an instance of a woman willing to
have it known still remains to be discovered. The iron-master's widow
exacted a promise of secrecy before the committed herself When Geoffrey
had pledged his word to hold his tongue in public until she gave
him leave to speak, Mrs. Glenarm, without further hesitation, said
Yes--having, be it observed, said No, in the course of the last two
years, to at least half a dozen men who were Geoffrey's superiors in
every conceivable respect, except personal comeliness and personal
strength.

There is a reason for every thing; and there was a reason for this.

However persistently the epicene theorists of modern times may deny it,
it is nevertheless a truth plainly visible in the whole past history of
the sexes that the natural condition of a woman is to find her master in
a man. Look in the face of any woman who is in no direct way dependent
on a man: and, as certainly as you see the sun in a cloudless sky,
you see a woman who is not happy. The want of a master is their
great unknown want; the posse