daintiest person!--not prim--but you make everything you wear refined.
When I compare you with Cynthia Welwyn!"

She raised her shoulders scornfully. Lucy Friend, aghast at the
outrageousness of the comparison, tried to silence her--but quite in
vain. Helena ran on.

"Did you watch Cynthia last night? She was playing for Cousin Philip with
all her might. Why doesn't he marry her? She would suit his autocratic
ideas very well. He is forty-four. She must be thirty-eight if she is a
day. They have both got money--which Cynthia can't do without, for she is
horribly extravagant. But I wouldn't give much for her chances. Cousin
Philip is a tough proposition, as the American says. There is no getting
at his real mind. All one knows is that it is a tyrannical mind!"

All softness had died from the girl's face and sparkling eyes. She sat on
the floor, her hands round her knees, defiance in every tense feature.
Mrs. Friend was conscious of renewed alarm and astonishment, and at last
found the nerve to express them.

"How can you call it tyrannical when he spends all this time and thought
upon you!"

"The gilding of the cage," said Helena stubbornly. "That is the way women
have always been taken in. Men fling them scraps to keep them quiet. But
as to the _real_ feast--liberty to discover the world for themselves,
make their own experiments--choose and test their own friends--no, thank
you! And what is life worth if it is only to be lived at somebody's
else's dictation?"