shness and deliberate
immorality of the most cold-blooded kind, I simply don't know what
does."

Lady Engleton seemed to ponder somewhat seriously, as she stood looking
down at the grave beside her.

"How we ever came to have tied ourselves into such an extraordinary
mental knot is what bewilders me," Hadria continued, "and still more,
why it is that we all, by common consent, go on acting and talking as if
the tangled skein ran smooth and straight through one's fingers."

"Chiefly, perhaps, because women won't speak out," suggested Lady
Engleton.

"They have been so drilled," cried Hadria, "so gagged, so deafened, by
'the shrieks of near relations.'"

Lady Engleton was asking for an explanation, when the wedding-bells
began to clang out from the belfry, merry and roughly rejoicing.
"Tom-boy bells," Hadria called them. They seemed to tumble over one
another and pick themselves up again, and give chase, and roll over in a
heap, and then peal firmly out once more, laughing at their romping
digression, joyous and thoughtless and simple-hearted. "Evidently
without the least notion what they are celebrating," said Hadria.

The bride came out of church on her husband's arm. The children set up a
shout. Hadria and Lady Engleton, and, farther back, Professor Theobald
and Joseph Fleming, could see the two figures pass down to the carriage
and hear the carriage drive away. Hadria drew a long breath.

"I am afraid she was in love with Joseph Fleming," remarked Lady
Engleton. "I hoped at one time that he cared for her, but that Irish
friend of Marion's, Katie O'Halloran, came on the scene and spoilt my
little romance."

"I wonder why she married this man? I wonder why the wind blows?" was
added in self-derision at the question.

The rest of the party were now departing. "O sleek wedding guests,"
Hadria apostrophized them, "how solemnly they sat there, like
all-knowing sphinxes, watching, watching, and that child so
helpless--handcuffed, manacled! How many prayers will be offered at the
shrine of the goddess of Duty within the next twelve months!"

Mrs. Jordan, a British matron of solid proportions, passed down the path
on the arm of a comparatively puny cavalier. The sight seemed to stir up
some demon in Hadria's bosom. Fantastic, derisive were her comments on
that excellent lady's most cherished principles, and on her well-known
and much-vaunted mode of training her large family of daughters.

"Only the traditional i