, if you can master these
alien ideas upon which the old system rested, just in the same
measure will you understand the horror these people had for marriages
with the Insecure. In the case of their girls and women it was
extraordinarily rare, and in the case of either sex it was regarded
as a disastrous social crime. Anything was better than that.

You are probably aware of the hideous fate that was only too probably
the lot, during those last dark days, of every girl of the insecure
classes who loved and gave way to the impulse of self-abandonment
without marriage, and so you will understand the peculiar situation
of Nettie with young Verrall. One or other had to suffer. And as
they were both in a state of great emotional exaltation and capable
of strange generosities toward each other, it was an open question
and naturally a source of great anxiety to a mother in Mrs. Verrall's
position, whether the sufferer might not be her son--whether as
the outcome of that glowing irresponsible commerce Nettie might
not return prospective mistress of Checkshill Towers. The chances
were greatly against that conclusion, but such things did occur.

These laws and customs sound, I know, like a record of some
nasty-minded lunatic's inventions. They were invincible facts in
that vanished world into which, by some accident, I had been born,
and it was the dream of any better state of things that was scouted
as lunacy. Just think of it! This girl I loved with all my soul,
for whom I was ready to sacrifice my life, was not good enough to
marry young Verrall. And I had only to look at his even, handsome,
characterless face to perceive a creature weaker and no better
than myself. She was to be his pleasure until he chose to cast her
aside, and the poison of our social system had so saturated her
nature--his evening dress, his freedom and his money had seemed
so fine to her and I so clothed in squalor--that to that prospect
she had consented. And to resent the social conventions that
created their situation, was called "class envy," and gently born
preachers reproached us for the mildest resentment against an injustice
no living man would now either endure or consent to profit by.

What was the sense of saying "peace" when there was no peace? If
there was one hope in the disorders of that old world it lay in
revolt and conflict to the death.

But if you can really grasp the shameful grotesqueness of the old
life, you will begin to appre