resources where we have only one. And you ought to be
stronger and nobler according to your advantages; you ought to rise
superior to the temptations that beset a poor, weak, ill-educated
woman, whom everybody has been flattering from her cradle, and whom
you, I dare say, have helped to flatter, turning her head with
compliments, like all the rest of them. Come, now, is not there
something in that?"

"Well, I suppose," said Harry, "that when Lillie and I were girl and
boy together, I did flatter her, sincerely that is. Her beauty made a
fool of me; and I helped make a fool of her."

"And I dare say," said Rose, "you told her that all she was made for
was to be charming, and encouraged her to live the life of a butterfly
or canary-bird. Did you ever try to strengthen her principles, to
educate her mind, to make her strong? On the contrary, haven't you
been bowing down and adoring her for being weak? It seems to me that
Lillie is exactly the kind of woman that you men educate, by the way
you look on women, and the way you treat them."

Harry sat in silence, ruminating.

"Now," said Rose, "it seems to me it's the most cowardly and unmanly
thing in the world for men, with every advantage in their hands, with
all the strength that their kind of education gives them, with all
their opportunities,--a thousand to our one,--to hunt down these poor
little silly women, whom society keeps stunted and dwarfed for their
special amusement."

"Miss Ferguson, you are very severe," said Harry, his face flushing.

"Well," said Rose, "you have this advantage, Mr. Endicott: you know,
if I am, the world will not be. Everybody will take your part;
everybody will smile on you, and condemn her. That is generous, is
it not? I think, after all, Noah Claypole isn't so very uncommon a
picture of the way that your lordly sex turn round and cast all
the blame on ours. You will never make me believe in a protracted
flirtation between a gentleman and lady, where at least half the blame
does not lie on his lordship's side. I always said that a woman had
no need to have offers made her by a man she could not love, if she
conducted herself properly; and I think the same is true in regard to
men. But then, as I said before, you have the world on your side;
nine persons out of ten see no possible harm in a man's taking every
advantage of a woman, if she will let him."

"But I care more for the opinion of the tenth person than of the
nine," said Ha