The ventilation of free discussion would doubtless have been an advantage
to Evadne at this impressionable period, when she was still, as it were,
more an intellectual than a human being, travelling upon her head rather
than upon her heart--so to speak--and one cannot help speculating about
the probable modification it would have wrought in some of her opinions.
Unfortunately, however, her family was one of those in which the
_cloture_ is rigorously applied when any attempt is made to introduce
ideas which are not already old and accustomed. It was as if her people
were satisfied that by enforcing silence they could prevent thought.




CHAPTER IV.


It is interesting to trace the steps by which Evadne advanced: one item of
knowledge accidentally acquired compelling her to seek another, as in the
case of some disease mentioned in a story-book, the nature of which she
could not comprehend without studying the construction of the organ it
affected. But haphazard seems to have determined her pursuits much more
than design as a rule. Some people in after life, who liked her views,
said they saw the guiding hand of Providence directing her course from the
first; but those who opposed her said it was the devil; and others again,
in idleness or charity, or the calm neutrality of indifference, set it all
down to the Inevitable, a fashionable first cause at this time, which is
both comprehensive, convenient, and inoffensive, since it may mean
anything, and so suits itself to everybody's prejudices.

But she certainly made her first acquaintance with anatomy and physiology