y eyes; but she still
wanted much loving to bring out the natural tenderness which had been
so often and so cruelly nipped back in its growth. Beth had been born
to be a woman, but circumstances had been forcing her to become a
career. Strangely enough, some of the scenes she saw during her
rambles in London helped to soften her. While she was under her
husband's influence, she saw the evil only, and was filled with
bitterness. London meant for her in those days the dirt and squalor of
the poor, the depravity of the rich, the fiendish triumph of the lust
of man, and the horrible degradation of her own sex; but now that her
mind was recovering its tone, and she could see with her own eyes, she
discovered the good at war with the evil, the courage and kindliness
of the poor, signs of the growth of better feeling in the selfish and
greedy rich, the mighty power of purity at war with the license of
man, and the noble attitude of women wherever injustice was rife, the
weak oppressed, and the wronged remained unrighted; then her heart
expanded with pity, and instead of the torment of unavailing hate, she
began to revive in the glow of strengthening gleams of hope. It was in
those days too that she learnt to appreciate the wonder and beauty of
the most wonderful and beautiful city ever seen; and her eyes grew
deep from long looking and earnest meditating upon it. She
occasionally experienced the sickening sensation of being followed
about by one of those specimens of mankind so significantly called
"sly dogs" by their fellow-men. They made themselves particularly
objectionable in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park; but she found that
an appeal to a policeman or a Park-keeper, or to any decent workman,
was enough to stop the nuisance. Genuine respect for women, which is
an antidote to the moral rottenness that promotes the decay of
nations, and portends the indefinite prolongation of the life of a
race, is of slow growth, but it is steadily increasing among the
English-speaking peoples.

During her rambles, Beth composed long letters to her friends, but
somehow none of them were ever written. She had managed to send a few
hurried lines of explanation to Mrs. Kilroy in the midst of her
packing before she left Slane. As she had not known where she would
be, she had asked Angelica to address her letters to Slane to be
forwarded; but no reply had come as yet, and Beth was just a little
sore and puzzled about it. However, she knew th