. For he would never allow that it was owing to her
conscientiousness--her conscience, in short--that Margaret Harold's
married life had been what it was; that sort of conscientiousness was
odious.

"Don't imagine that I admire conscience," he remarked. "Too much of it
makes an arid desert of a woman's life. A woman of that sort, too, makes
her whole family live in the desert!"

Margaret made no reply to this. She left him and went to find Mrs.
Rutherford.

"Of course if it is Garda, little Garda," that lady replied, with a sort
of sardonic playfulness which she had lately adopted, "I couldn't dream
of objecting." She had given up open opposition since Winthrop's
suggestion that Margaret could have, if she should wish it, a home of
her own. The suggestion had been very disagreeable, not only in itself
(the possibility of such a thing), but also because it cut so completely
across her well-established position that it was an immense favor on her
part to give Margaret a home. The favor implied, of course, a following
gratitude; and Margaret's gratitude had been the broad cushion upon
which Mrs. Rutherford had been comfortably seated for seven years. Take
it away, and she would be reduced to making objections--objections (if
it should really come to that) to Margaret's departure; and what
objections could she make? She would never admit that her niece's
presence had become necessary to her comfort; and to say that she was
too young and attractive to be at the head of a house of her own, this
would not accord at all with her accustomed way of speaking of her--a
way which had carried with it the implication (though not in actual
words) that she was neither. For some reason, the youth of other women
was always an offence to Mrs. Rutherford.

However, she was skilful in reducing that attraction. Up to twenty,
girls, of course, were "silly," "uninteresting." After that date, they
all sprang immediately, in her estimation, to be "at least twenty-five,"
and well on the road, both in looks and character, to old-maidhood. If
they married, it was even easier; for in a few months they were sure to
become "so faded and changed, poor things," that one would scarcely know
them; and, with a little determination, this stage could be kept along
for fifteen or twenty years. Only when they were over forty did Mrs.
Rutherford begin to admit the possibility of their being rather
attractive; in this lady's opinion, all the really "superb" w