began to comfort her.

"Of course, you'll write and tell me everything. It will be almost as if
I were with you."

"And you love Oliver, don't you, mother?"

"How could I help it, dear--only I can't quite get used to your calling
your husband by his name, Jinny. It would have horrified your
grandmother, and somehow it does seem lacking in respect. However, I
suppose I'm old-fashioned."

"But, mother, he laughs if I call him 'Mr. Treadwell.' He says it
reminds him of his Aunt Belinda."

"Perhaps he's right, darling. Anyway, he prefers it, and I fancy your
grandfather wouldn't have liked to hear his wife address him so
familiarly. Times have changed since my girlhood."

"And Oliver has lived out in the world so much, mother."

"Yes," said Mrs. Pendleton, but her voice was without enthusiasm. The
"world" to her was a vague and sinister shape, which looked like a
bubble, and exerted a malignant influence over those persons who lived
beyond the borders of Virginia. Her imagination, which seldom wandered
farther afield than the possibility of the rector or of Virginia falling
ill, or the dreaded likelihood that her market bills would overrun her
weekly allowance, was incapable of grasping a set of standards other
than the one which was accepted in Dinwiddie.

"Wherever you are, Jinny, I hope that you will never forget the ideas
your father and I have tried to implant in you," she said.

"I'll always try to be worthy of you, mother."

"Your first duty now, of course, is to your husband. Remember, we have
always taught you that a woman's strength lies in her gentleness. His
will must be yours now, and wherever your ideas cross, it is your duty
to give up, darling. It is the woman's part to sacrifice herself."

"I know, mother, I know."

"I have never forgotten this, dear, and my marriage has been very happy.
Of course," she added, while her forehead wrinkled nervously, "there are
not many men like your father."

"Of course not, mother, but Oliver----"

In Mrs. Pendleton's soft, anxious eyes the shadow darkened, as if for
the first time she had grown suspicious of the traditional wisdom which
she was imparting. But this suspicion was so new and young that it could
not struggle for existence against the archaic roots of her inherited
belief in the Pauline measure of her sex. It was characteristic of
her--and indeed of most women of her generation--that she would have
endured martyrdom in support of the consecrate