scarcely perceptible sneer of contempt, and after a
moment's pause addressed himself to Ione.

'I have not, beautiful Ione,' said he, 'been fortunate enough to find
you within doors the last two or three times that I have visited your
vestibule.'

'The smoothness of the sea has tempted me much from home,' replied Ione,
with a little embarrassment.

The embarrassment did not escape Arbaces; but without seeming to heed
it, he replied with a smile: 'You know the old poet says, that "Women
should keep within doors, and there converse."'

'The poet was a cynic,' said Glaucus, 'and hated women.'

'He spoke according to the customs of his country, and that country is
your boasted Greece.'

'To different periods different customs. Had our forefathers known
Ione, they had made a different law.'

'Did you learn these pretty gallantries at Rome?' said Arbaces, with
ill-suppressed emotion.

'One certainly would not go for gallantries to Egypt,' retorted Glaucus,
playing carelessly with his chain.

'Come, come,' said Ione, hastening to interrupt a conversation which she
saw, to her great distress, was so little likely to cement the intimacy
she had desired to effect between Glaucus and her friend, 'Arbaces must
not be so hard upon his poor pupil. An orphan, and without a mother's
care, I may be to blame for the independent and almost masculine liberty
of life that I have chosen: yet it is not greater than the Roman women
are accustomed to--it is not greater than the Grecian ought to be.
Alas! is it only to be among men that freedom and virtue are to be
deemed united? Why should the slavery that destroys you be considered
the only method to preserve us? Ah! believe me, it has been the great
error of men--and one that has worked bitterly on their destinies--to
imagine that the nature of women is (I will not say inferior, that may
be so, but) so different from their own, in making laws unfavorable to
the intellectual advancement of women. Have they not, in so doing, made
laws against their children, whom women are to rear?--against the
husbands, of whom women are to be the friends, nay, sometimes the
advisers?' Ione stopped short suddenly, and her face was suffused with
the most enchanting blushes. She feared lest her enthusiasm had led her
too far; yet she feared the austere Arbaces less than the courteous
Glaucus, for she loved the last, and it was not the custom of the Greeks
to allow their women (at least such of