e by me;'
and, to make room for her, Mrs. Barton moved nearer to Alice. 'So my
beautiful Olive doesn't care for a pack of women,' said Mrs.
Barton--'Olive does not like a pack of women; she would prefer a
handsome young lord, or a duke, or an earl.'

Olive turned up her lips contemptuously, for she guessed her mother's
meaning.

'What curious lives those girls do lead, cooped up there by themselves,
with their little periodical trip up to the Shelbourne Hotel. Of course
the two young ones never could have done much; they never open their
lips, but Gladys is a nice girl in her way, and she has some money of
her own, I wonder she wasn't picked up.'

'I should like to know who would care for her?'

'She had a very good chance once; but she wouldn't say yes, and she
wouldn't say no, and she kept him hanging after her until at last off he
went and married someone else. A Mr. Blake, I think.'

'Yes, that was his name; and why wouldn't she marry him?'

'Well, I don't know--folly, I suppose. He was, of course, not so young
as Harry Renley, but he had two thousand a year, and he would have made
her an excellent husband; kept a carriage for her, and a house in
London: whereas you see she has remained Miss Brennan, goes up every
year to the Shelbourne Hotel to buy dresses, and gets older and more
withered every day.'

'I know they lead a stupid life down here, but mightn't they go abroad
and travel?' asked Alice; 'they are no longer so very young.'

'A woman can do nothing until she is married,' Mrs. Barton answered
decisively.

'But some husbands treat their wives infamously; isn't no husband better
than a bad husband?'

'I don't think so,' returned Mrs. Barton, and she glanced sharply at her
daughter. 'I would sooner have the worst husband in the world than no
husband.' Then settling herself like a pleader who has come to the
incisive point of his argument, she continued: 'A woman is absolutely
nothing without a husband; if she doesn't wish to pass for a failure she
must get a husband, and upon this all her ideas should be set. I have
always found that in this life we can only hope to succeed in what we
undertake by keeping our minds fixed on it and never letting it out of
sight until it is attained. Keep on trying, that is my advice to all
young ladies: try to make yourselves agreeable, try to learn how to
amuse men. Flatter them; that is the great secret; nineteen out of
twenty will believe you, and the one that d