“Do you call that constancy?  Why, if a fellow can’t wait three years for a lovely girl like that, he must be a poor stick.  Why, my uncle Montgomery was engaged to his wife seventeen years, while he went out to India and shook the pagoda-tree, after which he came back, paid all his father’s debts, and they married and went into the house they had picked out before he sailed,” said Mr. Heathcote.

“Good gracious! what a time!  I hope the poor things were happy at last.  Were they?” asked Edith.

“H-m—­pretty well.  He is a rather fiery, tyrannical old party.  She doesn’t get her own way to hurt,” he replied.

“I have heard that Englishwomen give way to the men in everything and are always, voluntarily or involuntarily, sacrificed to them.  It must be so bad for both,” said Edith sweetly.

“Oh, you go in for woman’s rights and that sort of thing, I suppose,” he said, in a tone of annoyance.

“Indeed I don’t do anything of the kind,” replied she, with warmth.  “If I did, I should be aping the men when I wasn’t sneering at them.  But I respect your sex most when they most deserve to be respected, and I don’t see anything to admire in a selfish, tyrannical man that is always imposing his will, opinions, and wishes upon the ladies of his household and expects to be the first consideration from the cradle to the grave because he happens to be a man.”

“But he is the head of his house.  He ought to get his own way, if anybody does, and, if he is not a coward, he will, too,” said Mr. Heathcote rather hotly.  “Would you have a man a molly-coddle, tied to his wife’s apron-string, and not daring to call his soul his own?”

“Not at all,” replied Edith.  “It is the cowards that are the tyrants.  ‘The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring,’ as our American poet says.  And women have souls of their own, except in the East.  Why shouldn’t they be the first consideration and do as they please, pray?  They are the weaker, the more delicate and daintily bred.  If there is any pampering and spoiling to be done, they should be the objects of it.  And as to rights, there is no divine right of way given to man, that I know of.  I don’t believe in that sort of thing at all.  Of course no reasonable woman wants or expects everybody to kootoo before her and everything to give way to her.”

“And no gentleman fails to show a proper respect for his wife’s wishes and comfort, not to mention her happiness,” said Mr. Heathcote.  “But of course that sort of thing is only to be found in America.  Englishmen are all selfish, and tyrants, and domestic monsters, I know.”

“I didn’t say anything of the kind,” replied Edith quickly, her cheeks pink with excitement.  “I don’t know anything about Englishmen or the domestic system of England, and I never expect to.  But, if what I have heard is true, it is a system that tends to make men mortally selfish; and selfish people, whether they are men or women, and whether they know it or not, are all monsters.  But I apologize for my remarks, and, as I am not interested in the subject in the least, we will talk of something else, if you please.”