husbands, of whom women are to be the friends, nay, sometimes the
advisers?' Ione stopped short suddenly, and her face was suffused with
the most enchanting blushes. She feared lest her enthusiasm had led her
too far; yet she feared the austere Arbaces less than the courteous
Glaucus, for she loved the last, and it was not the custom of the Greeks
to allow their women (at least such of their women as they most honored)
the same liberty and the same station as those of Italy enjoyed. She
felt, therefore, a thrill of delight as Glaucus earnestly replied:

'Ever mayst thou think thus, Ione--ever be your pure heart your unerring
guide! Happy it had been for Greece if she had given to the chaste the
same intellectual charms that are so celebrated amongst the less worthy
of her women. No state falls from freedom--from knowledge, while your
sex smile only on the free, and by appreciating, encourage the wise.'

Arbaces was silent, for it was neither his part to sanction the
sentiment of Glaucus, nor to condemn that of Ione, and, after a short
and embarrassed conversation, Glaucus took his leave of Ione.

When he was gone, Arbaces, drawing his seat nearer to the fair
Neapolitan's, said in those bland and subdued tones, in which he knew so
well how to veil the mingled art and fierceness of his character:

'Think not, my sweet pupil, if so I may call you, that I wish to shackle
that liberty you adorn while you assume: but which, if not greater, as
you rightly observe, than that possessed by the Roman women, must at
least be accompanied by great circumspection, when arrogated by one
unmarried. Continue to draw crowds of the gay, the brilliant, the wise
themselves, to your feet--continue to charm them with the conversation
of an Aspasia, the music of an Erinna--but reflect, at least, on those