“You!  You will be as old as Methuselah, if you wait till I am your wife.  I dare say Perry has got a sister.  Suppose you ask him?  She would be just the right person for you.”

Geoffrey gave the flower another turn in his teeth, and looked as if he thought the idea worth considering.

“All right,” he said.  “Any thing to be agreeable to you.  I’ll ask Perry.”

He turned away, as if he was going to do it at once.  Mrs. Glenarm put out a little hand, ravishingly clothed in a blush-colored glove, and laid it on the athlete’s mighty arm.  She pinched those iron muscles (the pride and glory of England) gently.  “What a man you are!” she said.  “I never met with any body like you before!”

The whole secret of the power that Geoffrey had acquired over her was in those words.

They had been together at Swanhaven for little more than ten days; and in that time he had made the conquest of Mrs. Glenarm.  On the day before the garden-party—­in one of the leisure intervals allowed him by Perry—­he had caught her alone, had taken her by the arm, and had asked her, in so many words, if she would marry him.  Instances on record of women who have been wooed and won in ten days are—­to speak it with all possible respect—­not wanting.  But an instance of a woman willing to have it known still remains to be discovered.  The iron-master’s widow exacted a promise of secrecy before the committed herself When Geoffrey had pledged his word to hold his tongue in public until she gave him leave to speak, Mrs. Glenarm, without further hesitation, said Yes—­having, be it observed, said No, in the course of the last two years, to at least half a dozen men who were Geoffrey’s superiors in every conceivable respect, except personal comeliness and personal strength.

There is a reason for every thing; and there was a reason for this.

However persistently the epicene theorists of modern times may deny it, it is nevertheless a truth plainly visible in the whole past history of the sexes that the natural condition of a woman is to find her master in a man.  Look in the face of any woman who is in no direct way dependent on a man:  and, as certainly as you see the sun in a cloudless sky, you see a woman who is not happy.  The want of a master is their great unknown want; the possession of a master is—­unconsciously to themselves—­the only possible completion of their lives.  In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this one primitive instinct is at the bottom of the otherwise inexplicable sacrifice, when we see a woman, of her own free will, throw herself away on a man who is unworthy of her.  This one primitive instinct was at the bottom of the otherwise inexplicable facility of self-surrender exhibited by Mrs. Glenarm.