urn over consequences! That Institution of Marriage was eyed. Is it
not a halting step to happiness? It is the step of a cripple,--and one
leg or the other poses for the feebler sex,--small is the matter
which! And is happiness our cry? Our cry is rather for circumstance and
occasion to use our functions, and the conditions are denied to women
by Marriage--denied to the luckless of women, who are many, very many:
denied to Aminta, calling herself Countess of Ormont, for one, denied
to Mrs. Lawrence Finchley for another, and in a base bad manner. She had
defended her good name triumphantly, only to enslave herself for life or
snatch at the liberty which besmirches.

Reviewing Mrs. Lawrence, Aminta's real heart pressed forward at the
beat, in tender pity of the woman for whom a yielding to love was to
sin; and unwomanly is the woman who does not love: men will say
it. Aminta found herself phrasing. 'Why was she unable to love her
husband?--he is not old.' She hurried in flight from the remark to
confidences imparted by other ladies, showing strange veins in an earthy
world; after which, her mind was bent to rebuke Mrs. Pagnell for the
silly soul's perpetual allusions to Lord Ormont's age. She did not think
of his age. But she was vividly thinking that she was young. Young,
married, loveless, cramped in her energies, publicly dishonoured--a Lady
Doubtful, courting one friend whom she liked among women, one friend
whom she respected among men; that was the sketch of her.

That was in truth the outline, as much as Aminta dared sketch of herself
without dragging her down lower than her trained instinct would bear
to look. Our civilization shuns nature; and most shuns it in the most
artificially civilized, to suit the market. They, however, are always
close to their mother nature, beneath their second nature's mask of
custom; and Aminta's unconscious concluding touch to the sketch: 'My
husband might have helped me to a footing in Society,' would complete it
as a coloured picture, if writ in tones.

She said it, and for the footing in Society she had lost her taste.

Mrs. Lawrence brought the final word from high quarters: that the
application must be deferred until Lord Ormont returned to town. It
was known before, that such would be the decision. She had it from the
eminent official himself, and she kicked about the room, setting her
pretty mouth and nose to pout and sniff, exactly like a boy whose chum
has been mishandled