ou have come to this conclusion!"

In looking over some old papers and books, one afternoon, Hadria came
upon the little composition called _Futility_, which a mood had called
forth at Dunaghee, years ago. She had almost forgotten about it, and in
trying it over, she found that it was like trying over the work of some
other person.

It expressed with great exactness the feelings that overwhelmed her now,
whenever she let her imagination dwell upon the lives of women, of
whatever class and whatever kind. Futility! The mournful composition,
with its strange modern character, its suggestion of striving and
confusion and pain, expressed as only music could express, the yearning
and the sadness that burden so many a woman's heart to-day.

She knew that the music was good, and that now she could compose music
infinitely better. The sharpness of longing for her lost art cut through
her. She half turned from the piano and then went back, as a moth to the
flame.

How was this eternal tumult to be stilled? Facts were definite and
clear, there was no room for doubt or for hope. These facts then had to
be dealt with. How did other women deal with them? Not so much better
than she did, after all, as it appeared when one was allowed to see
beneath the amiable surface of their lives. They were all spinning round
and round, in a dizzy little circle, all whirling and toiling and
troubling, to no purpose.

Even Lady Engleton, who appeared so bright and satisfied, had her secret
misery which spoilt her life. She had beauty, talent, wealth, everything
to make existence pleasant and satisfactory, but she had allowed
externals and unessentials to encroach upon it, to govern her actions,
to usurp the place of her best powers, to creep into her motives, till
there was little germ and heart of reality left, and she was beginning
to feel starved and aimless in the midst of what might have been plenty.
Lady Engleton had turned to her neighbour at the Red House in an
instinctive search for sympathy, as the more genuine side of her nature
began to cry out against the emptiness of her graceful and ornate
existence. Hadria was startled by the revelation. Hubert had always held
up Lady Engleton as a model of virtue and wisdom, and perfect
contentment. Yet she too, it turned out, for all her smiles and her
cheerfulness, was busy and weary with futilities. She too, like the
fifty daughters of Danaus, was condemned to the idiot's labour of
eternall