"Because"--her face shrewd and wilful as it had been sorrowful just

now--"I am by no means certain that I can do better than to marry

him. He is rich, good-looking (so people say!), well-born,

gentlemanly, and pleasant of temper. An imposing array of

advantages, you see! I might go further, and fare very much worse.

We shall not expect to pass our days in gazing at sunsets and

walking in the moonlight, you know. It is not every woman who can

marry the man she loves best. While the right to select and to woo

is usurped by the masculine portion of the community, it must,

perforce, be Hobson's choice with an uncountable majority of

feminines. I should not complain. The stall allotted to me by

Hobson--alias Fate--might hold a worse-conditioned animal than my

worshipping swain."

"What a wicked rattle you are!" Mabel said, affecting to box her

ears. "I could not love you if I believed you to be in earnest. As

to your figure of the stabled steed--this disapproving customer has

the consolation that she need not accept him, unless she wishes to

do so. She has the invaluable privilege of saying 'no' as often and

obstinately as she pleases."

"I deny it," said Rosa, perversely. "Parents, in this age, do not

make a custom of locking up refractory daughters in nunneries or

garrets until they consent to wed Baron Buncombe or my Lord Nozoo,

but there are, nevertheless, compulsory marriages in plenty. Society

warns me to make a creditable match, upon penalty, if I decline, of

being pointed out to the succeeding--and a fast-succeeding

generation it is! as a disappointed old maid--passée belle, who

squandered her capital of fascinations, and has become a pauper upon

public toleration, while my mother, sisters, and brothers are

growing impatient at my many and profitless flirtations, and anxious

to see me 'settled.' My mother's pet text, since I was sixteen, has

been her prayerful desire that I, the last of her nestlings, should

make choice of a tenable bough and helpful partner, and set up a

separate establishment before she dies. When that event occurs, I

shall be, in effect, homeless--a boarder around upon my rebukeful

relatives, who 'always thought how my trifling would end,' and who

will be forever scribbling 'vanitas vanitatum,' upon the tombstone

of my departed youth--my day of beaux and offers. You may shake your

head and look heroic with all your might! You are no better off than

I, should your brother see cause to refuse his consent to your

marriage with Mr. Chilton. He could, and probably would, coerce you

into another alliance before you were twenty-one. There are so many

ways of letting the life out of a woman's heart, when it is already

faint from disappointment! The spirit is oftener broken by

unyielding, but not seemingly cruel pressure, than by outrageous

violence. And Winston would show himself an adept in such arts, if

occasion offered."




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