imitate Gwendolen, let her consider the set of
her head and neck: if the angle there had been different, the chin
protrusive, and the cervical vertebrae a trifle more curved in their
position, ten to one Gwendolen's words would have had a jar in them for
the sweet-natured Rex. But everything odd in her speech was humor and
pretty banter, which he was only anxious to turn toward one point.)

"Can you manage to feel only what pleases you?" said he.

"Of course not; that comes from what other people do. But if the world
were pleasanter, one would only feel what was pleasant. Girls' lives
are so stupid: they never do what they like."

"I thought that was more the case of the men. They are forced to do
hard things, and are often dreadfully bored, and knocked to pieces too.
And then, if we love a girl very dearly we want to do as she likes, so
after all you have your own way."

"I don't believe it. I never saw a married woman who had her own way."

"What should you like to do?" said Rex, quite guilelessly, and in real
anxiety.

"Oh, I don't know!--go to the North Pole, or ride steeple-chases, or go
to be a queen in the East like Lady Hester Stanhope," said Gwendolen,
flightily. Her words were born on her lips, but she would have been at
a loss to give an answer of deeper origin.

"You don't mean you would never be married?"

"No; I didn't say that. Only when I married, I should not do as other
women do."

"You might do just as you liked if you married a man who loved you more
dearly than anything else in the world," said Rex, who, poor youth, was
moving in themes outside the curriculum in which he had promised to win
distinction. "I know one who does."

"Don't talk of Mr. Middleton, for heaven's sake," said Gwendolen,
hastily, a quick blush spreading over her face and neck; "that is
Anna's chant. I hear the hounds. Let us go on."

She put her chestnut to a canter, and Rex had no choice but to follow
her. Still he felt encouraged. Gwendolen was perfectly aware that her
cousin was in love with her; but she had no idea that the matter was of
any consequence, having never had the slightest visitation of painful
love herself. She wished the small romance of Rex's devotion to fill up
the time of his stay at Pennicote, and to avoid explanations which
would bring it to an untimely end. Besides, she objected, with a sort
of physical repulsion, to being directly made love to. With all her
imaginative delight in being ador