Probation

Castle Hill, the Spenceley mansion, was a large, new, imposing residence of red brick, with massive stone facings. It had been the dwelling of Mr. Spenceley and his family for some six or seven years, and it was within these walls that Helena sat in captivity, and groaned alternately over the selfishness of men and the mean-spiritedness of women.

On the appointed evening, Mrs. Mallory, her son, and Hugo, were driven to this mansion, and ushered into the drawing-room. It was an apartment vast in dimensions, lofty, dazzling, perfectly square, perfectly gorgeous, and more than perfectly uncomfortable.

Some ten or twelve persons were collected somewhere amidst the mass of gorgeous carpet, hangings, furniture, and dazzling crystal drops which seemed to blend and combine in a determined and successful effort to crush and annihilate the human portion of the scene. Sebastian and Hugo saw Mrs. Mallory sail up to a massive-looking lady in purple satin, and white lace, and unlimited jewellery of florid design and great brilliance. This lady she greeted almost affectionately. Was she not Helena’s mother? and did not Mrs. Mallory herself regard Helena almost as a daughter? Having introduced Sebastian and Hugo, Mrs. Mallory turned to Mr. Spenceley, while the young men bowed themselves before the mistress of the house.

She said she was very glad to see them. Then she told Sebastian that she had heard a great deal about him, and then she looked hurriedly around for ‘Mr. Spenceley.’

That gentleman, who had been exchanging courtesies in a loud and blatant voice with Mrs. Mallory, now began to welcome Sebastian to his native place, also in a loud and blatant manner.

‘Well, sir, I’m glad to see you. Come home just in the nick of time, you have. You’ve a grand opportunity for making your fortune now. Gad! But it’s providential, this American business! We shall get rid of some of our surplus stock now. It’ll give us a pull over our work-people too, at last; and not before we need it. The fellows were getting beyond everything, eh!’

Sebastian, his calm and serious eyes quietly scanning the strong, if coarse, under-bred face of the man before him, merely said that he was quite new to this kind of thing. He had not considered the subject in that light at all.

‘Well, I should advise you to do so as soon as possible then, or you’ll lose your chance,’ shouted Mr. Spenceley, whose voice was elevated so as to drown entirely those of the rest of the company, while his wife timidly looked on, her florid face set gravely, and her eyes round and staring with a sort of anxious attentiveness.

Sebastian foresaw that he would have to take her in to dinner, and he glanced at her now and then, wondering what he should say to her—how keep up some kind of a conversation. She was a tall, stout, matronly woman; once she must have been an extremely handsome lass. Her black hair was still abundant, and had something of the waviness of Helena’s: her eyes, too, were dark. She was as tall as her daughter, but more lymphatic in temperament.

Helena probably inherited her beauty from her mother, and her vehemence from her father. Mrs. Spenceley was accustomed to roll in her carriage through Bridgehouse and Lower Place, suburbs of Thanshope, and to look from her elevation upon the extensive matrons who stood at their cottage doors, exchanged gossip, and scolded their ingenuous offspring, sporting in the road before them; but her nature was the same as theirs. Denude her of her silks and satins, attire her in a cotton or linsey gown, with bare arms and a large apron, her hair twisted up into a knot behind, and her head capless; a cottage full of cares and unruly children, a rough ‘measter’ to make and mend and ‘do’ for, and she would have been indistinguishable from those other matrons. She would have fallen back into the old ways quite genially and naturally; she would have been what she certainly was not under existing arrangements—happy.

For Mrs. Spenceley was unhappy in her riches and greatness; she could remember quite distinctly the days when Spenceley had been overlooker at one of the great Thanshope factories, and she had done the work of the house, and brought up the children single-handed, and been happy—and not genteel. She remembered the sudden leap into prosperity, the gradually increasing establishment, Helena dismissed to a fashionable boarding-school, and Fred to a private and select academy, where he was to learn how to become a gentleman—that short, easy, and every-day process, where, as a matter of fact, he had drunk in one lesson, and one only, namely, that a fellow whose father has money, and who will one day have money himself, need not know, or do, or be anything—except rich. Mrs. Spenceley remembered how servants, of whom she stood in awe, had accumulated around her; how she had had to leave her kitchen to their tender mercies; how she had found that she must not handle a duster, or have an opinion as to the merits of the heave-shoulder or the wave-breast any longer; until she had got a magnificent housekeeper, in black silk and a lace cap, who was fully conscious of the primordial fact that large and wealthy establishments only existed in order that she might domineer over one of them. How Helena was returned upon her hands, a ‘finished’ young lady, ignorant, as it seemed to Mrs. Spenceley in her own ignorance, of the very elements of a womanly education—unable to keep house, to cook, to sew, even to distinguish ribs of beef from sirloin. She had ventured, mildly, to utter some of her woe to the father, who had said, ‘Pooh! Let the lass alone. She’ll never need to know such things. She shall marry a lord! Only don’t let her cross me and she’ll do.’ And Helena had been suffered to trample upon the domestic arts, and to throw herself, with all the energy of one who has nothing to do with herself, into all sorts of questions about which her active brain made her curious, while her unfinished education left her profoundly ignorant of their practical bearings. She had no female friends except Mrs. Mallory and Miss Mereweather, a conspicuous friend and upholder of ‘the cause.’ She loved Mrs. Mallory, because that lady was kind to her, and was by no means a nonentity; and she adored Miss Mereweather because of her talents, or what seemed to Helena her talents.

Friends at home the girl had none. Fred had one of those hopelessly dense natures which may be called the complacently brutal—nothing in the way of friendship or sympathy was to be had from him. Her father—Helena, in her intercourse at school with girls of good family and social surroundings, had learnt to know that her father’s manners and language were to be abhorred, while, had he been a Sir Charles Grandison in the matter of deportment, his coarse bullying and ferocious bantering of her mother would alone have made the hot-spirited girl almost hate him.

And Fred—his mother stood in profound awe of him; his talk, his slang, his ways in general; and she was the one soul on earth, except himself, who was firmly convinced of the fact that Frederick Spenceley was at once a finished gentleman and a consummate man of the world.

As Sebastian sat watching his hostess, and partly divining some of these facts, a voice at his elbow roused him.

‘Good evening, Mr. Mallory. You look as if you were dreaming.’

Looking quickly round, he saw Helena standing close beside him, smiling as frankly as if no misunderstanding had ever existed between them, as if they had not quarrelled violently within two hours of first seeing each other. How lovely she was! None but a very lovely woman could have stood the dull ivory satin dress she wore, fitting tight in the waist, without a fold or a crease; and, in an age of voluminous, portentous crinolines, trailing straight and long behind her. She wore a black lace fichu, and elbow sleeves with black lace ruffles falling from them. The fichu was fastened with a golden brooch; beyond that was not a ribbon, not a frill, not a jewel or a flower about her. And her beauty came triumphant through the ordeal.

They had parted on decidedly evil terms, and he was surprised now to find that she welcomed him cordially, and smiled as she took the chair beside him.

‘I am afraid I was very cross the other night,’ said she, with a sunny smile. ‘But I thought you had treated me badly, and I am going to have my revenge to-night, and show you that I am in earnest. My greatest friend, Laura Mereweather, has most fortunately been able to come just when I invited her. Wasn’t that wonderful?’

‘I am prepared to say that it was; but I don’t yet know why.’

‘You know Miss Mereweather; by name, at least?’

‘To my shame I must confess that I never even heard of her before.’

‘What an extraordinary thing! She has a European reputation.’

‘You astonish me! For what?’

‘As being the most advanced female thinker, and the greatest benefactor to her sex, of her time.’

Sebastian’s face fell, as he looked round the room.

‘These very intellectual women have often nothing remarkable in their personal appearance,’ said he. ‘Would you believe that, of the several young ladies I see seated about the room, I could not say which I should suppose to be Miss Mereweather.

‘That,’ said Helena impressively, ‘that slight girl, all intellect, and mind, and spirit, talking to my brother—that is Laura!’

‘Is it really?’ he said, his eyes falling upon the ethereal-looking being described by Helena.

He saw a thin, nervous-looking girl—a girl with not a bad face, if it could not be called absolutely handsome. She too was dressed, like Helena, in a tightly fitting robe with undistended skirts, but her dress was black. She wore an eyeglass, looked restlessly around, and had a deep contralto voice. There was nothing alarming in her appearance; she looked, thought Sebastian, as if she would have made an excellent head-mistress of a large school, the matron of an hospital, or some authority of that description.

‘She is a woman of powerful individuality, I should say,’ he remarked.

‘Is she not? After dinner she shall talk to you.’

‘Oh, you are very kind! I wouldn’t trouble her for the world.’

‘It is no trouble. Nothing done for the cause would be a trouble to Laura; and then you must be enlightened. You must learn that ours is not a cause to be treated with levity. You must be punished for what you did and said the other night,’ said Helena.

‘I submit; but—I am sure you could talk just as well,’ said Sebastian, resignedly.

‘Ah, if I could!’ said Helena, gazing with admiring devotion towards her friend.

‘Is there not an immensity of power and force about her?’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Laura has several times been mistaken for a man—by persons who have heard her voice, and her remarks, without seeing her.’

‘Has she? How excessively annoying for her!’ said Sebastian, with feeling.

‘Annoying! It pleases her, as a testimony to her power, and as a proof that there is no real disparity in the respective capacities of men and women. Of course, when it is known that books or pictures have been written or painted by women, all hope of fair and impartial criticism is over.’

‘Is it?—Well, I was looking at the question from another point of view. I thought that if Miss Mereweather disapproves so strongly of men in general, it would annoy her to be mistaken for one of that odious and inferior sex; and, moreover, would only be a sign of how very different she must be from most women.’

‘She is very superior to most women; if that is what you mean, I concede the point willingly.’

‘Well, if such a superior woman is often mistaken for a man, is not that a piece of negative evidence of the inferiority of women in general?’ he asked politely.

Helena’s face had flushed again.

‘As I said, Laura shall talk to you. She will argue much better than I can. I do not pretend to her abilities. And there is Parsons announcing dinner,’ added Helena hastily, her colour mounting still higher as she caught Sebastian’s eyes fixed with a grave yet not unkindly expression upon her face.

He rose to offer Mrs. Spenceley his arm, and stood with her, watching the couples as they filed out of the room. Yes, Helena was lovely, and not all her wild talk, not even her enthusiastic admiration for Miss Mereweather, could make her otherwise.

He looked absently on, as first his mother and Mr. Spenceley went by; next a gorgeous dowager, whose tribal name and standing were unknown to him, but whom he distinctly heard saying something about ‘the ’oist at the Lang’um ’otel,’ as she swept past on the arm of a flaccid-faced, red-haired, meek-looking man, pertaining to the goodly company of cotton-spinners. The wife of the said cotton-spinner followed next, with a gentle-looking incumbent—he who ministered to the spiritual needs of Mr. Spenceley and his family. More couples followed. Fred Spenceley with Miss Mereweather—more gorgeous dowagers and resplendent spinsters, and more of the native young men, leading the same to the banquet, and, at last, Helena, in her creamy robes, with Hugo.

‘The lucky young dog!’ thought Sebastian, resignedly, as Hugo’s eyes met his, and the lad smiled rather triumphantly, in the full consciousness that he was leading out the prettiest woman in the room.

Was she talking women’s rights now? Sebastian wondered, as he silently brought up the rear with the equally silent Mrs. Spenceley. No! She was laughing with Hugo, like any other pleasant, well-conditioned girl, and asking him to tell her exactly how he spelt his name, and if it had any particular meaning.

‘For I know nothing about German, you know, except a translation of the “Sorrows of Werther,” which I thought very funny.’

‘And I do not know much about English,’ said Hugo, much delighted with his own good fortune, ‘but I can understand yours, sehr gut, I mean, very well. You speak so clearly—it is different from the London people.’

‘Not bad for a first attempt, old boy!’ thought Sebastian, smiling as they entered the celebrated dining-room of Castle Hill, with its pictures and bronzes, and statuary, all of the very best, and ‘bought by people who understood such things,’ as Mr. Spenceley was wont modestly to say, when any one praised any of his artistic treasures.

Mrs. Spenceley did not look like a person who would have exactly a discriminating taste in the matter of genre-paintings, or landscape, but Sebastian broke the silence between them by remarking on a little picture hanging opposite to him.

‘Yes; it’s by a person called Ansdell, I believe,’ said Mrs. Spenceley. ‘They say it’s very good; but for my part I’m no judge of such things.’

Sebastian bowed, and then, thinking that perhaps local topics might prove more successful than artistic ones, said he feared that distress was already beginning amongst the work-people.

Mrs. Spenceley turned with some vivacity to her guest.

‘You’re right, Mr. Mallory. If it goes on as it is doing, it’ll break some ’earts before all’s over.’

‘Do you visit much amongst them?’

‘Not so much as I could wish. There’s some of the poor creatures will soon be fair clemming—starving, I mean.’ Mrs. Spenceley sank her voice, and every now and then her eye turned with a little nervous, wavering glance towards her lord at the other end of the table. ‘You see I shouldn’t like to go amongst them so much without I could keep them a bit. I should like to have a soup-kitchen!’ she added with feeling; ‘but Spenceley doesn’t quite approve of it. He says that many of them have money laid by, and he’s of opinion that we must let them help themselves a bit before we begin to help them.’

‘From a politico-economical point of view Mr. Spenceley is perhaps right,’ said Sebastian, glancing down the table at the red-faced, coarse-featured man, with a heavy jaw not devoid of cruelty; and noting that same jaw reproduced even more obtrusively and unpleasantly in the son; scarcely at all in the daughter, or at least only in a manner which gave an expression of decision to the charming mouth.

‘I know nothing about politics,’ said Mrs. Spenceley; ‘and you may mark my words—those that’s starving will want bread—not politics.’

‘Certainly they will. Unfortunately you often cannot give them the one without a good deal of the other.’

‘I dare say. But if the war doesn’t stop soon we shall have to do something, if it was only to try and teach the poor women to make the most of their bits of stuff. Most of them are no housekeepers to speak of. They can spin and weave, but they can’t make home comfortable, and after all, that’s the chief thing. But,’ she added, suddenly remembering different reports she had heard of Sebastian, and Helena’s contemptuous announcement that he was a fop, who thought the world was made for his amusement, and that there was nothing in life worth the trouble of being earnest about, ‘you won’t be much interested in these kind of things, Mr. Mallory.’

‘On the contrary, I am much interested in it. Your idea makes me wonder if something could not be done. If some schools, or something of that kind, could be established,[2] if some of the ladies of the town would take it up—my mother and you, for example, Mrs. Spenceley—and make it unnecessary for those poor girls to be wandering about, laughing and making fun of people in the streets as I saw them the other day. And your daughter—I should think Miss Spenceley would find the work congenial.’

‘Helena!’ echoed the mother, shaking her head. ‘It’s of no use talking about her, Mr. Mallory. She has always some fresh craze in her head, and never a useful one. That horrid Miss Mereweather has been the ruin of her.’

Sebastian repressed a smile.

‘If she only would turn to something useful!’ lamented Mrs. Spenceley, ‘but with these ridiculous ideas about women being better than men, and all that—and she can’t even make a shirt for her father or a pudding for her brother. Oh, but I beg your pardon—only I do often tell her that she would never make a good wife with these ideas—not if she had millions of pounds and was the prettiest girl in England.’

Though Mrs. Spenceley threw back her head and spoke in a tone of annoyance, yet Sebastian clearly distinguished an accent of pride in her voice. The homely mother then was not altogether displeased with her wilful, brilliant girl.

‘And what does she say to that?’ he asked, looking at Hugo and Helena, who seemed to be greatly enjoying some remarkably good joke; and he thought: ‘The prettiest girl in England! At least she might hold her own amongst a dozen of the prettiest.’

‘Oh, she says she never will be married, and that nonsense. I tell her to wait until Mr. Right comes, and then we shall hear a different song. I wish he would, I’m sure,’ she added fervently, ‘before she gets spoiled. She has a right good heart, has Helena, if only a giddy head.’

Sebastian did not answer. He was still looking towards Hugo and Helena, and felt intensely conscious of the ripple of laughter which scarcely ceased between them. It was impossible that women’s rights, or any such bristly, hateful topic could be causing that delighted look on Hugo’s dark, artist face; could call that gracious curve to Helena’s red lips. Hugo threw himself with passion into the joy of the moment, as Sebastian knew; Helena seemed to have something of his eager, inflammable temperament. At least they appeared to be very happy together.

---

Dinner over; a group of four congregated in a corner. Helena on a sofa, with Hugo beside her; Sebastian and Miss Mereweather facing one another in chairs, and the cross-examination about to begin. Helena had wished to leave Sebastian and Miss Mereweather to fight it out alone, but he had meekly suggested that it was not fair to make him confront the most remarkable woman of her age entirely without support; and Hugo adding his petition, Helena had consented to be present at the discussion.

Helena seated herself, opened her fan, and said,

‘Now, Laura dear, Mr. Mallory would like to know your views on the Woman Question.’

She avoided meeting the look of sorrowful amazement and reproach with which Sebastian heard this decidedly exaggerated announcement, and Laura replied,

‘I should first wish to know Mr. Mallory’s own views upon that subject—the subject, I may say, of the present age.’

‘They are soon stated,’ said Sebastian. ‘I have none.’

‘Then there is some hope for you,’ said Miss Mereweather, with rather a pitying smile.

‘I am glad of that. At the same time, I should like to know in which direction the hope shows itself.’

‘Your frank acknowledgment of your utter ignorance of the question is a great point in your favour. As you have no views at all upon it, you are the more likely to be able to receive just ones when they are offered to you.’

‘I have some preconceived ideas upon the matter of logic and reasonableness, common sense, and all that kind of thing. Will that be against me in this case, do you think?’

‘I dislike flippancy,’ said Laura.

‘I did not mean to be flippant. I merely wished for information.’

‘We will take the suffrage first,’ said Miss Mereweather, raising her voice somewhat, as if to scatter such irrelevant remarks to the winds. ‘Are you in favour of extending the franchise to women—I mean women-householders and ratepayers?’

‘On what grounds?’

‘On the only grounds on which they can claim it; on the grounds that they are mentally, morally, and, in the practical affairs of the world, the equal of man; and that, as they bear equal burdens for the State, so they should have equal privileges.’

‘I could never grant them the suffrage on those grounds.’

‘What!’ exclaimed both ladies, while Helena started forward, and dropped her fan, her eyes flashing, and her face flushing.

‘Because it would take too long to prove your case. What is more, if you fight the question on that ground, I doubt whether you will ever win it. You cannot be said to have proved a case to your opponent until you have got him to agree with you, and you will never, in your lifetime at least, get more than a number to agree with you on that point; it may be an influential number, and a select one, but it will not be at all a majority.’

‘Your argument is not logical, it is a quibble,’ said Miss Mereweather disdainfully. ‘Your real opinion is that women ought not to have the franchise.’

‘I never said so. If they think it a privilege, and if they would be pleased to have it, why not?’

Miss Mereweather, unaccustomed to this style, neither agreement nor opposition, was silent a moment. Then a shade of pique crossed her brow.

‘You do not think women worth discussing anything seriously with?’ said she.

‘Excuse my saying that you are quite mistaken.’

‘Then why don’t you discuss this question seriously?’ was the decidedly feeble reply of the most remarkable woman of her time.

‘But I do. I say, why not give them the franchise if they would like to have it? I suppose that by degrees they would get educated up to it.’

‘Mr. Mallory! you are absolutely insulting,’ cried Helena, angrily, and Sebastian merely answered with a grave look, and the remark,

‘I am sorry if I have offended you.’

Helena’s lips, opened to utter further reproach, suddenly closed; with a look of embarrassment she became silent, and Miss Mereweather, in a business-like tone, said,

‘Mr. Mallory is not so dark as he seems to you, my dear, I have good hopes for him. We will turn to another branch of the subject. What is your opinion, Mr. Mallory, of the relative status before the law of husband and wife? What do you think of the laws about married women’s property?’

‘I think they are bad,’ said Sebastian, stifling a yawn, and glancing at Hugo, who was fanning himself with Helena’s fan, while she leaned eagerly forward.

‘Ah!’ said Laura, ‘an opinion at last! You agree with us that there, in that most important of all relations, the woman is a slave.’

‘I don’t think I said so. I suppose the woman might be a slave if every husband were as bad as the law would allow him to be. Men are not all tyrants, nor women all slaves! so I suppose that is why the law has not been changed.’

‘That is sophistry,’ said Laura.

‘Will you deny that it is fact?’ he inquired politely.

‘Then you would allow the law to be altered?’

‘Certainly.’

‘It is an important subject for you, my dear child,’ said Miss Mereweather to Helena. ‘I only hope your resolution will remain firm, and that you will resist temptation and specious promises. In your case you will have plenty of both.’

‘Of course I shall resist,’ said Helena, a little crossly. ‘I am not quite imbecile, Laura, and know how to take care of myself. My mind is quite made up on that subject.’

‘In what direction?’ inquired Sebastian.

‘I have told you already. I know I shall have property,’ said Helena, trying to speak with lofty indifference, but all the same, not unaware that the young man’s eyes were fixed upon her face, and with her own wavering as she went on with the speech which she had uttered many a time before, and which now struck her for the first time as falling somewhat flat, and not being quite equal to the occasion. Other young men had looked at her, and said they were sure she didn’t mean it, and it was too cruel of her, and other ‘vacant chaff’ of the same description. Sebastian only looked at her gravely, calmly, as it seemed to her, almost pityingly, and in perfect silence.

The glance stung and galled her. She would not be deterred by that look. What was Sebastian Mallory but a man—a thoughtless young man, who had dared to laugh at her views?

‘And property entails responsibilities,’ she continued.

‘It certainly does.’

‘I shall therefore never marry,’ said Helena, courageously, though her face burned, and she wished intensely that she had never insisted upon the discussion. ‘I shall look after my own affairs, and arrange them according to my own judgment. I will be free, and nobody’s servant.’

‘A very wise resolution; provided, first, that you keep it; and second, that you feel equal to disposing judiciously of a large property.’

‘I have no doubt about that,’ said she, with a lofty smile, still not raising her eyes, and very angry with herself for not being able to do so.

Sebastian smiled, and the smile made Helena feel hot and uncomfortable.

‘I hope,’ said he, with extreme politeness, ‘that you will feel the satisfaction which should be the reward of such high motives.’

Helena flushed again. She had argued the point more than once with different people, and without this feeling of embarrassment. Why was she embarrassed now? What would that ‘nicest girl’ he ever knew think, if she were here? Had she money? He had said she had been brought up in the school of adversity. That reminded Helena of another point in the argument, which she ought to have advanced long ago. She was dimly conscious of a kind of bathos as she said, ‘I don’t believe in useless fine ladies, you know, all the same. I think women ought to be able to earn their own living, if necessary. They ought to be able to be quite independent of men, if they choose.’

‘Do you think they ever would choose?’ he asked with a suppressed smile.

‘I know this, that I would rather earn fourpence a day as a needle-woman, than depend upon any man!’ said Helena, hotly and indignantly. ‘And I could always do that.’

‘In that case I congratulate you,’ he retorted ironically. ‘You are superior to all calamities and misfortunes. I wish I could feel myself equally secure.’

‘You have not argued a single point,’ said Helena with passion. ‘I shall never be at the trouble to talk seriously to you again.’

‘If you will only talk to me at all, I shall be delighted.’

She had risen, and whirled herself away to the other end of the room, where she busied herself in setting two young ladies to screech duets, while she conversed (seriously or otherwise) with the clergyman.

Sebastian turned with a half-smile to Miss Mereweather. He found an unaccountable pleasure in goading Helena into a passion. He had a dim, vague idea that if he tried, he could not only irritate her into fury, but soothe her back into calmness; but he was quite sure he never would try. Rages, he thought, were not in his line. He liked better, as a permanency, the perfect temper and calm self-possession of another character. No one would want to tease Adrienne.

His mind half given to such thoughts, he conversed with Miss Mereweather, and his opinion of Helena’s discrimination was gradually raised. Miss Mereweather was not at all bitter about her defeat—if defeat it were. She was clever, sensible, accomplished. She owned that she did think a great deal about the advancement of women and their improvement, and she was an ardent advocate for giving them the franchise; but, she added, she could not go to the lengths Helena did, and very soon they left that subject and turned to others. Their conversation was perfectly amicable and agreeable, and Helena watched them from afar, with a darkling, somewhat resentful glance. Dear Laura’s one fault, she thought, was that she was too facile—that she compromised too easily.

As the Mallorys drove home, Mrs. Mallory, completely deceived by the long conversation which had taken place, was in a disastrously, unsuspiciously amiable frame of mind, and was correspondingly dejected when Sebastian, summing up his description of the evening’s entertainment, said that Miss Spenceley had adopted the strictly feminine line of argument, ‘Agree with all I say, or I will quarrel with you!’

‘As I did not agree with all she said, she quarrelled with me. Violà tout! Did she talk women’s rights to you, Hugo?’

‘To me—no!’

‘Why I should be selected as the victim, I can’t imagine,’ pursued Sebastian. ‘It is a pity she does it, for she could be nice, I am sure; and as it is, she makes herself simply a bore.’

Mrs. Mallory was silent, mentally heaping opprobrium upon Helena’s crazes.