With her fingers full of purple woolen skeins, and her eyes bent down, Edna recited, in a low, sweet voice the most eloquent panegyric which man’s heart ever pronounced on woman’s intellect: 

“To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part, the author, of all that is best in my writings, the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward, I dedicate this volume.  Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful re-examination, which they are now never destined to receive.  Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom.”

“Where did you find that dedication?” asked Mr. Murray.

“In Mill’s book on liberty.”

“It is not in my library.”

“I borrowed it from Mr. Hammond.”

“Strange that a plant so noxious should be permitted in such a sanctified atmosphere!  Do you happen to recollect the following sentences?  ’I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions!’ ’There is a Greek ideal of self-development which the Platonic and Christian ideal of self-government blends with but does not supersede.  It may be better to be a John Knox than an Alcibiades, but it is better to be a Pericles than either.’”

“Yes, sir.  They occur in the same book; but, Mr. Murray, I have been advised by my teacher to bear always in mind that noble maxim, ’I can tolerate every thing else but every other man’s intolerance’; and it is with his consent and by his instructions that I go like Ruth, gleaning in the great fields of literature.”  “Take care you don’t find Boaz instead of barley.  After all, the universal mania for match-making schemes and manoeuvers which continually stir society from its dregs to the painted foam-bubble dancing on its crested wave, is peculiar to no age or condition, but is an immemorial and hereditary female proclivity; for I defy Paris or London to furnish a more perfectly developed specimen of a ‘manoeuvring mamma’ than was crafty Naomi, when she sent that pretty little Moabitish widow out husband-hunting.”

“I heartily wish she was only here to outwit you!” laughed his cousin, nestling her head against his arm as they sat together on the sofa.

“Who?  The widow or the match-maker?”

“Oh! the match-maker, of course.  There is more than one Ruth already in the field.”

The last clause was whispered so low that only St. Elmo heard it, and any other woman but Estelle Harding would have shrunk away in utter humiliation from the eye and the voice that answered: