was neither weak nor criminal at heart. Thus far she had yielded
thoughtlessly, inconsiderately, rather than deliberately, to the
circumstances and traditions of her life. Her mother had been a
belle and something of a coquette, and, having had her career, was
in the main a good and sensible wife. She had given her husband
little trouble if not much help. She had slight interest in that which
made his life, and slight comprehension of it, but in affectionate
indifference she let him go his way, and was content with her domestic
affairs, her daughter, and her novel. Marian had unthinkingly looked
forward to much the same experience as her natural lot. To-night
she found herself querying: "Are there men to-day who are not half
what they might have been because of mamma's delusive smiles? Have
any gone down into shadows darker than those cast by misfortune and
death, because she permitted herself to become the light of their
lives and then turned away?"

Then came the rather painful reflection: "Mamma is not one to be
troubled by such thoughts. It does not even worry her that she is
so little to papa, and that he virtually carries on his life-work
alone. I don't see how I can continue my old life after to-night.
I had better shut myself up in a convent; yet just how I can change
everything I scarcely know."

The night proved a perturbed and almost sleepless one from the chaos
and bitterness of her thoughts. The old was breaking up; the new,
beginning.

The morning found her listless, discontented, and unhappy. The
glamour had faded out of her former life. She could not continue
the tactics practised in coarse imitation by the Irish servant, who