might still trim her arts to baffle the marriage. Women with brains,
moreover, are all heartless: they have no pity for distress, no horror of
catastrophes, no joy in the happiness of the deserving. Brains in men
advance a household to station; but brains in women divide it and are the
wrecking of society. Fortunately Lady Wathin knew she could rally a
powerful moral contingent, the aptitude of which for a one-minded
cohesion enabled it to crush those fractional daughters of mischief.
She was a really good woman of the world, heading a multitude; the same
whom you are accustomed to hear exalted; lucky in having had a guided
girlhood, a thick-curtained prudence; and in having stock in the moral
funds, shares in the sentimental tramways. Wherever the world laid its
hoards or ran its lines, she was found, and forcible enough to be
eminent; though at fixed hours of the day, even as she washed her hands,
she abjured worldliness: a performance that cleansed her. If she did not
make morality appear loveable to the objects of her dislike, it was owing
to her want of brains to see the origin, nature and right ends of
morality. But a world yet more deficient than she, esteemed her
cordially for being a bulwark of the present edifice; which looks a
solid structure when the microscope is not applied to its components.

Supposing Percy Dacier a dishonourable tattler as well as an icy lover,
and that Lady Wathin, through his bride, had become privy to the secret
between him and Diana? There is reason to think that she would have held
it in terror over the baneful woman, but not have persecuted her: for she
was by no means the active malignant of theatrical plots. No, she would
have charged it upon the possession of brains by women, and have had a
further motive for inciting the potent dignitary her husband to employ
his authority to repress the sex's exercise of those fell weapons,
hurtful alike to them and all coming near them.