“You have been generous, Grandmother,” said Margaret, humbly.  There had risen up before her a hundred extravagances in which the old lady had indulged her—­things quite unnecessary for show, the intimate luxuries that contribute only indirectly to show by aiding in giving the feeling and air of refinement.  It was of these luxuries that Margaret was especially fond; and her grandmother, with an instinct that those tastes of Margaret’s proved her indeed a lady—­and made it impossible that she should marry, or even think of marrying, “foolishly”—­had been most graciously generous in gratifying them.  Now, these luxuries were to be withdrawn, these pampered tastes were to be starved.  Margaret collapsed despairingly upon her table.  “I wish to marry, Heaven knows!  Only—­only—­” She raised herself; her lip quivered—­ “Good God, Grandmother, I can’t give myself to a man who repels me!  You make me hate men—­marriage—­everything of that kind.  Sometimes I long to hide in a convent!”

“You can indulge that longing after the end of this season,” said her grandmother.  “You’ll certainly hardly dare show yourself in Washington, where you have become noted for your dress....  That’s what exasperates me against you!  No girl appreciates refinement and luxury more than you do.  No woman has better taste, could use a large income to better advantage.  And you have intelligence.  You know you must have a competent husband.  Yet you fritter away your opportunities.  A very short time, and you’ll be a worn, faded old maid, and the settled people who profess to be so fond of you will be laughing at you, and deriding you, and pitying you.”

Deriding!  Pitying!

“I’ve no patience with the women of that clique you’re so fond of,” the old lady went on.  “If the ideas they profess—­the shallow frauds that they are!—­were to prevail, what would become of women of our station?  Women should hold themselves dear, should encourage men in that old-time reverence for the sex and its right to be sheltered and worshiped and showered with luxury.  As for you—­a poor girl—­countenancing such low and ruinous views—­Is it strange I am disgusted with you?  Have you no pride—­no self-respect?”

Margaret sat motionless, gazing into vacancy.  She could not but endorse every word her grandmother was saying.  She had heard practically those same words often, but they had had no effect; now, toward the end of this her least successful season, with most of her acquaintances married off, and enjoying and flaunting the luxury she might have had—­for, they had married men, of “the right sort”—­“capable husbands”—­men who had been more or less attentive to her—­now, these grim and terrible axioms of worldly wisdom, of upper class honor, from her grandmother sounded in her ears like the boom of surf on reefs in the ears of the sailor.

A long miserable silence; then, her grandmother:  “What do you purpose to do, Margaret?”