were inseparable from a maintenance of morals and conventions such
as the average man assumes in his estimate of women.

The guest at table was a young girl named Rhoda Nunn. Tall, thin,
eager-looking, but with promise of bodily vigour, she was singled at
a glance as no member of the Madden family. Her immaturity (but
fifteen, she looked two years older) appeared in nervous
restlessness, and in her manner of speaking, childish at times in
the hustling of inconsequent thoughts, yet striving to imitate the
talk of her seniors. She had a good head, in both senses of the
phrase; might or might not develop a certain beauty, but would
assuredly put forth the fruits of intellect. Her mother, an invalid,
was spending the summer months at Clevedon, with Dr. Madden for
medical adviser, and in this way the girl became friendly with the
Madden household. Its younger members she treated rather
condescendingly; childish things she had long ago put away, and her
sole pleasure was in intellectual talk. With a frankness peculiar to
her, indicative of pride, Miss Nunn let it be known that she would
have to earn her living, probably as a school teacher; study for
examinations occupied most of her day, and her hours of leisure were
frequently spent either at the Maddens or with a family named
Smithson--people, these latter, for whom she had a profound and
somewhat mysterious admiration. Mr. Smithson, a widower with a
consumptive daughter, was a harsh-featured, rough-voiced man of
about five-and-thirty, secretly much disliked by Dr. Madden because
of his aggressive radicalism; if women's observation could be
trusted, Rhoda Nunn had simply fallen in love with him, had made
him, perhaps unconsciously, the object of her earliest passion.
Alice and Virginia commented on the fact in their private colloquy
with a shamefaced amusement; they feared that it spoke ill for the