s a woman:
for God's sake, save me from marrying that wretch!"

She spoke in a tone inconsistently calm.

"Girl! is it possible you dare to call the man, whom your father and I
have chosen for your husband, a wretch!"

"Is he not a wretch, mamma?"

"If he were, how should I know it? What has any lady got to do with a
man's secrets?"

"Not if he wants to marry her daughter?"

"Certainly not. If he should not be altogether what he ought to be--and
which of us is?--then you will have the honor of reclaiming him. But
men settle down when they marry."

"And what comes of their wives?"

"What comes of women. You have your mother before you, Hesper."

"O mother!" cried Hesper, now at length losing the horrible affectation
of calm which she had been taught to regard as _de rigueur_, "is it
possible that you, so beautiful, so dignified, would send me on to meet
things you dare not tell me--knowing they would turn me sick or mad?
How dares a man like that even desire in his heart to touch an innocent
girl?"

"Because he is tired of the other sort," said Lady Malice, half
unconsciously, to herself. What she said to her daughter was ten times
worse: the one was merely a fact concerning Redmain; the other revealed
a horrible truth concerning herself. "He will settle three thousand a
year on you, Hesper," she said with a sigh; "and you will find yourself
mistress."

"I don't doubt it," answered Hesper, in bitter scorn. "Such a man is
incapable of making any woman a wife."

Hesper meant an awful spiritual fact, of which, with all her ignorance
of human nature, she had yet got a glimpse in her tortured reflections
of late; but her mother's familiarity with evil misinterpreted her
innocence, and caused herself utter dismay. What right had a girl to
think at all for herself in such matters? Those were things that must
be done, not thought of!

"These things must not be thought
After these ways; so, they will drive us mad."

Yes, these things are hard to think about--harder yet to write about!
The very persons who would send the white soul into arms whose mere
touch is a dishonor will be the first to cry out with indignation
against that writer as shameless who but utters the truth concerning
the things they mean and do; they fear lest their innocent daughters,
into whose hands his books might chance, by ill luck, to fall, should
learn that it is _their_ business to keep themselves pure.--Ah, sweet
mothers! do no