ness of the conversation and the gossip
and tittle-tattle of society in country towns, meaning in your case in
Abchester, and should, therefore, be the last to blame him for revolting
against it."

"You forget, Anna," Mary said, calmly, "that the cases are altogether
different. He goes his way with the mere selfish desire to amuse
himself. I have set, what I believe to be a great and necessary aim
before me. I don't pretend that there is any sacrifice in it, on the
contrary it is a source of pleasure and satisfaction to devote myself to
the mission of helping my sex to regain its independence, and to take up
the position which it has a right to."

"Of course we are both agreed on that, my dear, we only differ in the
best way of setting about it."

"I don't suppose Mr. Hartington will take what I said to heart," Mary
replied serenely, "and if he does it is a matter of entire indifference
to me."

The subject of their conversation certainly showed no signs of taking
the matter to heart. He smiled as he resumed his work.

"She is just what she used to be," he said to himself. "She was always
terribly in earnest. My father was saying last time I was down that he
had learned from Brander that she had taken up all sorts of Utopian
notions about women's rights and so on, and was going to spend two
years abroad, to get up her case, I suppose. She has grown very pretty.
She was very pretty as a child, though of course last time I saw her she
was at the gawky age. She is certainly turning the tables on me, and she
hit me hard with that stale old Latin quotation. I must admit it was
wonderfully apt. She has a good eye for dress; it is not many girls that
can stand those severely plain lines, but they suit her figure and face
admirably. I must get her and her friend to sit on a rock and let me put
them into the foreground of one of my sketches; funny meeting her here,
however, it will be an amusement."

After that it became a regular custom for the two girls to stop as they
came along the shore for a chat with Cuthbert, sometimes sitting down on
the rocks for an hour; their stay, however, being not unfrequently cut
short by Mary getting up with heightened color and going off abruptly.
It was Cuthbert's chief amusement to draw her out on her favorite
subject, and although over and over again she told herself angrily that
she would not discuss it with him, she never could resist falling into
the snares Cuthbert laid for her. S