rnford in _The Head Station_, of Mrs. Lomax and Leopold
D'Acosta in _The Bond of Wedlock_, and of Mrs. Borlase and Esme
Colquhoun in _Affinities_, it is the woman who directly, or by
implication, insists upon respect of the marriage tie so long as it
remains a legal obligation.

But it should be made clear that Mrs. Praed is not in any sense a
propagandist on the subject of marriage. She illustrates, often
impressively, its difficulties and anomalies, but leaves the rest to the
judgment of the reader. The romantic, ignorant girl who marries on
trust, or is ready to do so, has numerous representatives in these
novels. Though it is a woman's view of her trials and unhappiness that
is given, there is nothing in the shape of a crusade against male vices.
It is not the faults of men that are dwelt upon so much as the
inevitably lenient, the pitifully inadequate estimate which women make
of men themselves.

The most striking illustration of this feature is probably contained in
the last scenes of _The Bond of Wedlock_, where the heroine learns at
once the hypocrisy of her father and the dishonour of her lover. The
father, in a fit of resentment, has revealed the mean plot by which she
has been enabled to divorce her husband and marry Sir Leopold D'Acosta.
The latter, seeing that Mrs. Lomax would never consent to an elopement,
has paid another woman--a former mistress of his--to incriminate Harvey
Lomax, while the audacious old humbug, his father-in-law, does the
business of a detective. Ariana's dream of happiness is dissipated. She
hardens into indifference. The revelation completes the disillusionment
which had already begun. 'I had set you up as my hero, and my ideal, and
I have found you--a man.' This is the summary of her life's experience,
which in effect is also that of Esther Hagart, Ginevra Rolt, Christina
Chard, Ina Gage, and others in the list of Mrs. Praed's unhappy
heroines. Married life, as they illustrate it, is usually a compromise.
Even that of Mrs. Lomax is not quite a failure. Her husband does not
attempt to conceal the fact that she no longer interests him, but with
that commonly-accepted philosophy which recognises a wife as at least an
adjunct to conventional respectability, he reminds her that, after all,
their union has some advantages:

'I would much rather have you for a wife than any other woman I ever
knew; and if I sometimes think a man is better who hasn't a wife, it
is only when y