that the dear pitiful grandmother is utterly dead and gone; and the fangs and claws of the wolf will show you which way your cake and honey went.  A most voracious wolf, this same Public Charity, and blessed with the digestion of an ostrich.  But go you to the Cantata, and sing your best, and if you happen to fall at the feet of pretty little Cecile Brompton, you will hear in the distance a subdued growl; the first note of the lupine fantasia that inevitably awaits you.  Oh!  I wonder if ever this green earth knew a time when hypocrisy and cant did not prowl even among the young lambs, pasturing in innocence upon the ‘thousand hills’ of God?  It seems to me that cant cropped out in the first pair that ever were born, and Cain has left an immense family.  Cant everywhere, in science and religion; in churches and in courts; cant among lawyers, doctors, preachers; cant around the hearth; cant even around the hearse.  It is the carnival of cant, this age of ours, and heartily as I despise it, I too have been duly noosed and collared, and taught the buttery dialect, and I am meekly willing to confess myself ’born thrall’ of cant.”

Regina smiled and shook her head, and tossing her large strong white hands restlessly over her pillow, Olga continued: 

“Indeed, I am desperately in earnest, and it is a melancholy truth that Longfellow tells us:  ‘Things are not what they seem.’  You appear disinclined to believe that I am one of those ‘whited sepulchres,’ outwardly fair and comely, but filled with unsavoury dust and ugly grinning skulls?  Life is a huge sham, and we are all masked puppets, jumping grotesquely, just as the strongest hands pull the wires.  Regina, I have gone to and fro upon the earth long enough to learn that the most acceptable present is never labelled advice; nevertheless, I would fain warn your unsophisticated young soul against some of the pitfalls into which I floundered, and got sadly bruised.  Never openly defy or oppose your apparent destiny, so long as it is in the soft hands of that willow wand—­your present guardian.  Strategy is better than fierce assault, bloodless cunning than a gory pitched battle; Cambyses’ cats took Pelusium more successfully than the entire Persian army could have done, and the head dresses Hannibal arranged for his oxen, delivered him from the clutches of Fabius and the legions.  In my ignorance of polite and prudent tactics, I dashed into the conflict, yelled, clawed (metaphorically, you understand), and fought like the Austrians at Wagram; but of course came out always miserably beaten, with trailing banners and many gaping wounds.  Regina, you might just as well stand below the Palisades, and fire at them with cartridges of boiled rice, as make open fight with Erle Palma.  Be wise and assume the appearance of submission, no matter how stubbornly you are resolved not to give up.  Don’t you know that Cilician geese outwit even the eagles?  In passing over Taurus, the geese always carry stones in their mouths, and thus by bridling their gabbling tongues they safely cross the mountain infested with eagles, without being discovered by their foes.  I commend to you the strategy of silence.”