flights
into Montaigne, Voltaire, Amiel, and others of hectic kidney. She
discovered, moreover, a sympathy with those women of strong minds who
have a quarrel with Providence for that they were not made men. Bess
believed in the equality of the sexes, without pausing to ask in what
they were unequal, and stood stoutly for the Rights of Woman, knowing
not wherein She was wronged or in what manner and to what extent She had
been given the worst of life's bargain. Bess was not a blue-stocking, as
Richard would have had it, and made no literary pretenses; but she
suffered from opinions concerning topics such as husband and wife, that
so far had had nothing better than theory to rest upon. All the same,
her friends were deeply satisfied with Bess; which helped that young
lady to a sense of satisfaction with herself and with them.

As head of the Marklins, Bess was made to decide things for herself. At
that, she decided in favor of nothing terrifying. She drank tea between
three and six each afternoon; she kept a cat named Ajax; and she
resolved to marry Mr. Fopling.

The latter young gentleman Bess called to her side when she pleased,
dismissed when he wearied her, and in all respects controlled his
conclusions, his conversations, and his whereabouts, as Heaven meant she
should. Bess preferred that Mr. Fopling call during the afternoon; she
required the morning for her household duties, and, when not screening
Dorothy from Storri, saved the evening for her books.

Ajax was a grave and formal cat, and, in his way, a personage. He was
decorous to a degree, unbended in no confidences with strangers, and
hated Mr. Fopling, whom he regarded as either a graceless profligate or
a domestic animal of unsettled species who, through no merit and by rank
favoritism, had been granted a place in the household superior to his
own. At sight of Mr. Fopling, Ajax would bottle-brush his tail, arch his
back, and explode into that ejaculation peculiar to cats. Mr. Fopling
feared Ajax, holding him to be rabid and not knowing when he would do
those rending deeds of tooth and claw upon him, of which the
ejaculation, the arched back, and the bottle-brush were signs and
portents.

It was the afternoon of the day following one of those Harley dinners
whereat Storri had been the sole and honored guest, and Bess was sipping
her tea. Her two favorites, Ajax and Mr. Fopling, were sitting in their
respective chairs, regarding each other with their usua