gan by selling oranges. Nevertheless, people in all directions have
assumed, for no other reason than that she became the heroine of a
romance, that she must have married the hero of it. This is unbearable,
not only because her little drama, if acted on such a thoughtless
assumption, must be spoiled, but because the true sequel is patent to
anyone with a sense of human nature in general, and of feminine
instinct in particular.

Eliza, in telling Higgins she would not marry him if he asked her, was
not coquetting: she was announcing a well-considered decision. When a
bachelor interests, and dominates, and teaches, and becomes important
to a spinster, as Higgins with Eliza, she always, if she has character
enough to be capable of it, considers very seriously indeed whether she
will play for becoming that bachelor's wife, especially if he is so
little interested in marriage that a determined and devoted woman might
capture him if she set herself resolutely to do it. Her decision will
depend a good deal on whether she is really free to choose; and that,
again, will depend on her age and income. If she is at the end of her
youth, and has no security for her livelihood, she will marry him
because she must marry anybody who will provide for her. But at Eliza's
age a good-looking girl does not feel that pressure; she feels free to
pick and choose. She is therefore guided by her instinct in the matter.
Eliza's instinct tells her not to marry Higgins. It does not tell her
to give him up. It is not in the slightest doubt as to his remaining
one of the strongest personal interests in her life. It would be very
sorely strained if there was another woman likely to supplant her with
him. But as she feels sure of him on that last point, she has no doubt
at all as to her course, and would not have any, even if the difference
of twenty years in age, which seems so great to youth, did not exist
between them.

As our own instincts are not appealed to by her conclusion, let us see
whether we cannot discover some reason in it. When Higgins excused his
indifference to young women on the ground that they had an irresistible
rival in his mother, he gave the clue to his inveterate
old-bachelordom. The case is uncommon only to the extent that
remarkable mothers are uncommon. If an imaginative boy has a
sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity
of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art
of