nearly every woman in the house your affairs, and they have all
sympathized with you and pitied you. I shall have to be plain, and tell
you that I can't have them sneering and laughing at any one who is my
guest. I can't let you defy public opinion here."

"Why, Grace," said Mrs. Maynard, buoyed above offence at her friend's
words by her consciousness of the point she was about to make, "you defy
public opinion yourself a good deal more than I do, every minute."

"I? How do I defy it?" demanded Grace indignantly.

"By being a doctor."

Grace opened her lips to speak, but she was not a ready person, and she
felt the thrust. Before she could say anything Mrs. Maynard went on:
"There isn't one of them that does n't think you're much more scandalous
than if you were the greatest flirt alive. But, I don't mind them, and
why should you?"

The serious girl whom she addressed was in that helpless subjection to
the truth in which so many New England women pass their lives. She could
not deny the truth which lurked in the exaggeration of these words, and
it unnerved her, as the fact that she was doing what the vast majority of
women considered unwomanly always unnerved her when she suffered herself
to think of it. "You are right, Louise," she said meekly and sadly. "They
think as well of you as they do of me."

"Yes, that's just what I said!" cried Mrs. Maynard, glad of her
successful argument.