The worst of you smart men is that you entirely
divorce verity from vivacity. The domestic woman is still a domestic
woman, though she become a widow."

"No," returned the Cynic, "the widow is a thing apart, if I may so
designate any of your captivating sex. Domestic she may still be in a
certain or uncertain subordinate sense, just as the social woman or the
woman with a mission may have a strain of domesticity in her make-up;
but when all has been said she is still in a separate class; she is, in
fact--a widow."

"I remember reading somewhere," I remarked, "that a little widow is a
dangerous thing. Manifestly the author of that brilliant epigram was
of your way of thinking. He would probably have classed her as an
explosive."

He turned to me and smiled mockingly.

"I think all men who have seriously studied the subject, as I have,
must have formed a similar opinion. The widow is dangerous because she
is a widow. She has tasted of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
She knows the weak places in man's defensive armour. She has acquired
skill in generalship which enables her to win her battles. Added to
all this is the pathos of her position, which is an asset of no
inconsiderable value. She knows to a tick of time when to allure by
smiles and melt by tears, and woe to the man who thinketh he standeth
when she proposes his downfall."

"My dear Derwent," interposed the squire from the other side the
hearth; "you speak, no doubt, from a ripe experience, if an outside
one, and no one here will question your authority; but surely the new
woman and the woman with a mission may be bracketed together."

The squire was leaning back in a comfortable saddle-bag, one leg thrown
easily over the other and his hands clasped behind his head. A
tolerant half-smile hung about the corners of his lips and lurked in
the shadows of his eyes. He has a grand face, and it shows to
perfection on an occasion like this.

The vicar sat near him. He is a spare, rather cadaverous man, who
lives among Egyptian mummies and Assyrian tablets and palimpsests and
first editions, and knows nothing of any statesman later than Cardinal
Wolsey. An open book of antiquities lay upon his knee, and his
finger-tips were pressed together upon it, but the eyes which blinked
over the top of his gold-rimmed spectacles were fixed upon space, and
the Cynic's vapourings were as unheeded as yesterday.

The vicar's wife is the very antithesis of