al
worth need not be a clever lady's-maid's strong point.

'Tom' was her old friend Edmund Lushington, one of the most
distinguished of the younger writers of the day. He was the only son
of the celebrated soprano, Madame Bonanni, now retired from the stage,
by her marriage with an English gentleman of the name of Goodyear, and
he had been christened Thomas. But his mother had got his name and
surname legally changed when he was a child, thinking that it would be
a disadvantage to him to be known as her son, as indeed it might have
been at first; even now the world did not know the truth about his
birth, but it would not have cared, since he had won his own way.

Margaret meant to marry him if she married at all, for he had been
faithful in his devotion to her nearly three years; and his rivalry
with Constantine Logotheti, her other serious adorer, had brought some
complications into her life. But on mature reflection she was sure
that she did not wish to marry any one for the present. So many of
her fellow-singers had married young and married often, evidently
following the advice of a great American humorist, and mostly with
disastrous consequences, that Margaret preferred to be an exception,
and to marry late if at all.

In the glaring light of the twentieth century it at last clearly
appears that marriageable young women have always looked upon marriage
as the chief means of escape from the abject slavery and humiliating
dependence hitherto imposed upon virgins between fifteen and fifty
years old. Shakespeare lacked the courage to write the 'Seven Ages of
Woman,' a matter the more to be regretted as no other writer has ever
possessed enough command of the English language to describe more than
three out of the seven without giving offence: namely, youth, which
lasts from sixteen to twenty; perfection, which begins at twenty and
lasts till further notice; and old age, which women generally place
beyond seventy, though some, whose strength is not all sorrow and
weakness even then, do not reach it till much later. If Shakespeare
had dared he would have described with poetic fire the age of the girl
who never marries. But this is a digression. The point is that the
truth about marriage is out, since the modern spinster has shown the
sisterhood how to live, and an amazing number of women look upon
wedlock as a foolish thing, vainly imagined, never necessary, and
rarely amusing.

The state of perpetual unsanctified v