eckless moods to-day.

"You have led me on, and must take the consequences!" she cried.
"Imagine," she continued with diabolical deliberation, "if Marion, on
any day _previous_ to this, had gone to her mother and expressed an
overpowering maternal instinct--a deep desire to have a child!"

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Lady Engleton.

"Why so shocked, since it is so holy?"

"But that is different."

"Ah! then it is holy only when the social edict goes forth, and
proclaims the previous evil good and the previous good evil."

"Come, come; the inconsistency is not quite so bad as that. (How that
man does dawdle!)"

Hadria shrugged her shoulders. "It seems to me so; for now suppose, on
the other hand, that this same Marion, on any day _subsequent_ to this,
should go to that same mother, and announce an exactly opposite
feeling--a profound objection to the maternal function--how would she be
received? Heavens, with what pained looks, with what platitudes and
proverbs, with what reproofs and axioms and sentiments! She would issue
forth from that interview like another St. Sebastian, stuck all over
with wounds and arrows. 'Sacred mission,' 'tenderest joy,' 'holiest
mission,' 'highest vocation'--one knows the mellifluous phrases."

"But after all she would be wrong in her objection. The instinct is a
true one," said Lady Engleton.

"Oh, then why should she be pelted for expressing it previously, if the
question is not indiscreet?"

"Well, it would seem rather gruesome, if girls were to be overpowered
with that passion."

"So we are all to be horribly shocked at the presence of an instinct
to-day, and then equally shocked and indignant at its absence to-morrow;
our sentiment being determined by the performance or otherwise of the
ceremony we have just witnessed. It really shows a touching confidence
in the swift adaptability of the woman's sentimental organization!"

Lady Engleton gave an uneasy laugh, and seemed lost in uncomfortable
thought. She enjoyed playing with unorthodox speculations, but she
objected to have her customary feelings interfered with, by a reasoning
which she did not see her way to reduce to a condition of uncertainty.
She liked to leave a question delicately balanced, enjoying all the fun
of "advanced" thought without endangering her favourite sentiments. Like
many women of talent, she was intensely maternal, in the instinctive
sense; and for that reason had a vague desire to insist on all other