t be afraid. You have brought them up so carefully, that
they suspect you no more than they do the well-bred gentlemen you would
have them marry. And have they not your blood in them? That will go
far. Never heed the foolish puritan. Your mothers succeeded with you:
you will succeed with your daughters.

But it is a shame to speak of those things that are done of you in
secret, and I will forbear. Thank God, the day will come--it may be
thousands of years away--when there shall be no such things for a man
to think of, any more than for a girl to shudder at! There is a
purification in progress, and the kingdom of heaven _will_ come, thanks
to the Man who was holy, harmless, undefined, and separate from
sinners. You have heard a little, probably only a little, about him at
church sometimes. But, when that day comes, what part will you have had
in causing evil to cease from the earth?

There had been a time in the mother's life when she herself regarded
her approaching marriage, with a man she did not love, as a horror to
which her natural maidenliness--a thing she could not help--had to be
compelled and subjected: of the true maidenliness--that before which
the angels make obeisance, and the lion cowers--she never had had any;
for that must be gained by the pure will yielding itself to the power
of the highest. Hence she had not merely got used to the horror, but in
a measure satisfied with it; never suspecting, because never caring
enough, that she had at the same time, and that not very gradually,
been assimilating to the horror; had lost much of what purity she had
once had, and become herself unclean, body and mind, in the contact
with uncleanness. One thing she did know, and that swallowed up all the
rest--that her husband's affairs were so involved as to threaten
absolute poverty; and what woman of the world would not count damnation
better than that?--while Mr. Redmain was rolling in money. Had she
known everything bad of her daughter's suitor, short of legal crime,
for her this would have covered it all.

In Hesper's useless explosion the mother did not fail to recognize the
presence of Sepia, without whose knowledge of the bad side of the
world, Hesper, she believed, could not have been awake to so much. But
she was afraid of Sepia. Besides, the thing was so far done; and she
did not think she would work to thwart the marriage. On that point she
would speak to her.

But it was a doubtful service that Sepia ha