epticism is masculine,
narrow, social scepticism is feminine? To get hearty, reverent, genuine
belief in the innocence of a slandered woman, go to a man: where the
world has once doubted, women, the world-worshippers, will for ever
after doubt also. You can never bring women to see that the pecked-at
fruit is always the richest and sweetest; they always take the benison
of the wooing bird to be the malison of the hidden worm!

* * *

Not very long ago I was down away in the vale of Belvoir. I stayed with
my friends at a great stately place, owned by as gallant a gentleman as
ever swung himself into saddle. His wife was a beautiful woman, and he
treated her with the courtliest tenderness: indeed, I often heard their
union cited as one of almost unequalled felicity. "He never had a
thought that he did not tell me," I heard his wife once say to a friend.
"Not a single thought, I know, all these twelve years of our marriage."
It was a happy belief--many women have the like--but it was an
unutterably foolish one; for the minds of the best and truest amongst
you are, in many things, as sealed books to those whom you care for the
most.

One bitter, black hunting-day, a day keen and cold, with frost, as men
feared, in the air, and with the ground so hard that even the Duke's
peerless "dandies," perfect hounds though they are, scarcely could keep
the scent, there came terrible tidings to the Hall--he had met with a
crashing fall. His horse had refused at timber, and had fallen upon him,
kicking his head with the hind hoofs repeatedly. They had taken him to
the nearest farmhouse, insensible; even dead already, they feared. His
wife and the elder amongst the beautiful children fled like mad
creatures across the brown fallows, and the drear blackened meadows. The
farm, happily, was not far: I sped with them.

When they reached him he was not quite lifeless, but he knew none of
them; his head had been beaten in by the plates of the kicking hoofs;
and they waited for his death with every moment, in the little old dusky
room, with its leaded lattices, and its odour of dried lavender, and its
bough of holly above the hearth. For this had chanced upon Christmas
Eve.

To his wife's agonies, to his children's moans, he was silent: he knew
nothing; he lay with closed eyes and crushed brain--deaf, blind, mute.
Suddenly the eyes opened, and stared at the red winter sun where it
glowed dimly through the squares of the