p to witness the signature, and when they had retired
Mr. Brander sat chatting for half an hour on general topics, Mr.
Hartington avoiding any further allusion to the subject of his illness.
Mr. Brander got back in time to dress comfortably for dinner.

"Really, Mary," he said, when he went into the drawing-room where his
wife and Mary were waiting ready for him, "I do think you might dress
yourself a little more brightly when we are going to such a house as we
are to-night. I don't say that that black silk with the lace and those
white flowers are not becoming, but I think something lighter and gayer
would be more appropriate to a young girl."

"I don't like colors, father, and if it hadn't been for mamma I should
never have thought of getting these expensive flowers. I do think women
lower themselves by dressing themselves as butterflies. No wonder men
consider they think of nothing but dress and have no minds for higher
matters."

"Pooh, pooh, my dear, the first duty of a young woman is to look as
pretty as she can. According to my experience men don't trouble
themselves much about the mind, and a butterfly after all is a good deal
more admired than a bee, though the bee is much more useful in the long
run."

"If a woman is contented to look like a butterfly, father, she must be
content to be taken for one, but I must say I think it is degrading that
men should look upon it in that light. They don't dress themselves up in
all sorts of colors, why should we."

"I am sure I can't tell you why, Mary, but I suppose it is a sort of
instinct, and instincts are seldom wrong. If it had been intended that
women should dress themselves as plainly and monotonously as we do, they
would not have had the love of decorating themselves implanted almost
universally among them. You are on the wrong track, child, on the wrong
track altogether, and if you and those who think like you imagine that
you are going to upset the laws of nature and to make women rivals of
men in mind if not in manner, instead of being what they were meant to
be, wives and mothers, you are althogether mistaken."

"That is only another way of putting it, father, that because woman have
for ages been treated as inferiors they ought always to remain so."

"Well, well, my dear, we won't argue over it. I think you are altogether
wrong, but I have no objection to your going your own way and finding it
out at last for yourself, but that does not alter my opinio