Margaret wondered how many thousands of girls had been similarly placed, and pitied them.  She thought of the atmosphere in which she lived, where it seemed to her every mother was possessed singularly and entirely of one aim, to marry her daughter as soon as possible to a man as rich as possible.  Marrying well simply meant marrying money.  Only a few days before her mother had come to her and said:  “Mrs. Fisher called and she was telling me about her daughter Alice.  It seems Alice is growing very pretty and very popular.  She said she was afraid Alice had taken, a liking to that Brandeth fellow, who’s only a clerk.  So Mrs. Fisher intends taking Alice to the seashore this summer, to an exclusive resort, of course, but one where there will be excitement and plenty of young gentlemen.”

At the remembrance Margaret gave a little contemptuous laugh.  A year ago she would not have divined the real purport of her mother’s words.  How easy that was now!  Mrs. Fisher had decided that as Alice was eighteen it was time a suitable husband was found for her.  Poor Alice!  Balls, parties, receptions there would be, and trips to the seashore and all the other society manoeuvers, made ostensibly to introduce Alice to the world; but if the truth were told in cold blood all this was simply a parading of the girl before a number of rich and marriageable men.  Poor Harry Brandeth!

She recalled many marriages of friends and acquaintances.  With strange intensity of purpose she brought each one to mind, and thought separately and earnestly over her.  What melancholy facts this exercise revealed!  She could not recall one girl who was happy, perfectly happy, unless it was Jane Silvey who ran off with and married a telegraph operator.  Jane was still bright-eyed and fresh, happy no doubt in her little house with her work and her baby, even though her people passed her by as if she were a stranger.  Then Margaret remembered with a little shock there was another friend, a bride who had been found on her wedding night wandering in the fields.  There had been some talk, quickly hushed, of a drunken husband, but it had never definitely transpired what had made her run out into the dark night.  Margaret recollected the time she had seen this girl’s husband, when he was drunk, beat his dog brutally.  Then Margaret reflected on the gossip she never wanted to hear, yet could not avoid hearing, over her mother’s tea-table; on the intimations and implications.  Many things she would not otherwise have thought of again, but they now recurred and added their significance to her awakening mind.  She was not keen nor analytical; she possessed only an ordinary intelligence; she could not trace her way through a labyrinth of perplexing problems; still, suffering had opened her eyes and she saw something terribly wrong in her mother’s world.

Once more she stopped pacing her room, for a step in the hall arrested her, and made her stand quivering, as if under the lash.