n expression of graceful sentiments, and
you are not ashamed to show me how meanly you regard all that is highest
and purest in life.'

'Shall I explain it? Women are very quick to get at realities, to see
below the surface in conduct and profession. We become, you say, worldly
as soon as we get into the world. Precisely because we have to be so
wide awake to protect ourselves. We instinctively know the difference
between the ring of false and true, and as we hear the false so much the
oftener Your charge against us of want of real feeling is the result of
your ignorance of women; you don't see below the surface.'

'Well now, apply all this to the present instance. What has your insight
discerned in my proposed marriage to cause you to regard it as a piece
of folly?'

'Simply this. You ally yourself with some one from a class beneath your
own. Such marriages very, very seldom prove anything but miserable, and
_always_ bring a great many troubles. You will say that Miss Hood is
raised by education above the class in which she was born; but no doubt
she has relatives, and they can't be entirely got rid of. However, that
isn't the point I lay most stress on.'

'Well?'

'I am quite sure you will make her miserable. You are marrying too
young. Your character is not fixed. In a few years, before that, you
will want to get rid of her.'

'Well, that is at all events intelligible. And your grounds for the
belief?'

'You are inconstant, and you are ambitious. You might marry a woman from
a class higher than your own, and when it is too late you will
understand what you have lost.'

'Worldly advantages, precisely.'

'And how if your keen appreciation of worldly advantages results in your
wife's unhappiness?'

'I deny the keen appreciation, in your sense.'

'Of course you do. Come to me in ten years and tell me your opinion of
women's ways of thinking.'

This was the significant part of their conversation. Wilfrid came to
land confirmed in his views; Mrs. Rossall, with the satisfaction of
having prophesied uncomfortable things.

She had a letter on the following morning on which she recognised
Beatrice Redwing's bend. To her surprise, the stamp was of Dunfield. It
proved that Beatrice was on a visit to the Baxendales. Her mother, prior
to going to the Isle of Wight, had decided to accept an invitation to a
house in the midland counties which Beatrice did not greatly care to
visit; so the latter had used the opport