LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear Miss Worsley, I thought you liked English
society so much. You were such a success in it. And you were so
much admired by the best people. I quite forget what Lord Henry
Weston said of you - but it was most complimentary, and you know
what an authority he is on beauty.

HESTER. Lord Henry Weston! I remember him, Lady Hunstanton. A
man with a hideous smile and a hideous past. He is asked
everywhere. No dinner-party is complete without him. What of
those whose ruin is due to him? They are outcasts. They are
nameless. If you met them in the street you would turn your head
away. I don't complain of their punishment. Let all women who
have sinned be punished.

[MRS. ARBUTHNOT enters from terrace behind in a cloak with a lace
veil over her head. She hears the last words and starts.]

LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear young lady!

HESTER. It is right that they should be punished, but don't let
them be the only ones to suffer. If a man and woman have sinned,
let them both go forth into the desert to love or loathe each other
there. Let them both be branded. Set a mark, if you wish, on
each, but don't punish the one and let the other go free. Don't
have one law for men and another for women. You are unjust to
women in England. And till you count what is a shame in a woman to
be an infamy in a man, you will always be unjust, and Right, that
pillar of fire, and Wrong, that pillar of cloud, will be made dim
to your eyes, or be not seen at all, or if seen, not regarded