“I?  How do I defy it?” demanded Grace indignantly.

“By being a doctor.”

Grace opened her lips to speak, but she was not a ready person, and she felt the thrust.  Before she could say anything Mrs. Maynard went on:  “There isn’t one of them that does n’t think you’re much more scandalous than if you were the greatest flirt alive.  But, I don’t mind them, and why should you?”

The serious girl whom she addressed was in that helpless subjection to the truth in which so many New England women pass their lives.  She could not deny the truth which lurked in the exaggeration of these words, and it unnerved her, as the fact that she was doing what the vast majority of women considered unwomanly always unnerved her when she suffered herself to think of it.  “You are right, Louise,” she said meekly and sadly.  “They think as well of you as they do of me.”

“Yes, that’s just what I said!” cried Mrs. Maynard, glad of her successful argument.

But however disabled, her friend resumed:  “The only safe way for you is to take the ground that so long as you wear your husband’s name you must honor it, no matter how cruel and indifferent to you he has been.”

“Yes,” assented Mrs. Maynard ruefully, “of course.”

“I mean that you must n’t even have the appearance of liking admiration, or what you call attentions.  It’s wicked.”

“I suppose so,” murmured the culprit.

“You have been brought up to have such different ideas of divorce from what I have,” continued Grace, “that I don’t feel as if I had any right to advise you about what you are to do after you gain your suit.”

“I shall not want to get married again for one while; I know that much,” Mrs. Maynard interpolated self-righteously.

“But till you do gain it, you ought not to regard it as emancipating you in the slightest degree.”

“No,” came in sad assent from the victim of the law’s delays.

“And I want you to promise me that you won’t go walking with Mr. Libby any more; and that you won’t even see him alone, after this.”

“Why, but Grace!” cried Mrs. Maynard, as much in amazement as in annoyance.  “You don’t seem to understand!  Have n’t I told you he was a friend of the family?  He’s quite as much Mr. Maynard’s friend as he is mine.  I’m sure,” she added, “if I asked Mr. Libby, I should never think of getting divorced.  He’s all for George; and it’s as much as I can do to put up with him.”

“No matter.  That does n’t alter the appearance to people here.  I don’t wish you to go with him alone any more.”

“Well, Grace, I won’t,” said Mrs. Maynard earnestly.  “I won’t, indeed.  And that makes me think:  he wanted you to go along this morning.”

“To go along?  Wanted me—­What are you talking about?”