often under an illusion about
women. They do not read them in a true light; they misapprehend them,
both for good and evil. Their good woman is a queer thing, half doll,
half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend. Then to hear them
fall into ecstasies with each other's creations--worshipping the heroine
of such a poem, novel, drama--thinking it fine, divine! Fine and divine
it may be, but often quite artificial--false as the rose in my best
bonnet there. If I spoke all I think on this point, if I gave my real
opinion of some first-rate female characters in first-rate works, where
should I be? Dead under a cairn of avenging stones in half an hour."

"Shirley, you chatter so, I can't fasten you. Be still. And, after all,
authors' heroines are almost as good as authoresses' heroes."

"Not at all. Women read men more truly than men read women. I'll prove
that in a magazine paper some day when I've time; only it will never be
inserted. It will be 'declined with thanks,' and left for me at the
publisher's."

"To be sure. You could not write cleverly enough. You don't know enough.
You are not learned, Shirley."

"God knows I can't contradict you, Cary; I'm as ignorant as a stone.
There's one comfort, however: you are not much better."

They descended to breakfast.

"I wonder how Mrs. Pryor and Hortense Moore have passed the night," said
Caroline, as she made the coffee. "Selfish being that I am, I never
thought of either of them till just now. They will have heard all the
tumult, Fieldhead and the cottage are so near; and Hortense is timid in
such matters--so, no doubt, is Mrs. Pryor."

"Take my word for it, Lina, Moore will have contrived to get his sister
out of the way. She went home with Miss Mann. He will have quartered
her there for the night. As to Mrs. Pryor, I own I am uneasy about her;
but in another half-hour we will be with her."

By this time the news of what had happened at the Hollow was spread all
over the neighbourhood. Fanny, who had been to Fieldhead to fetch the
milk, returned in panting haste with tidings that there had been a
battle in the night at Mr. Moore's mill, and that some said twenty men
were killed. Eliza, during Fanny's absence, had been apprised by the
butcher's boy that the mill was burnt to the ground. Both women rushed
into the parlour to announce these terrible facts to the ladies,
terminating their clear and accurate narrative by the assertion that
they were sure master mus