him from doing this?  One thing at least is certain,—­I have not tried to prevent it, and I fear there have been many little nameless things which he would regard as encouragement.  And he is only one.  With others I have gone farther and they have fared worse.  It is said that Mr. Folger, whom I refused last winter, is becoming dissipated.  Mr. Arton shuns society and sneers at women.  Oh, don’t let me think of any more.  What have I been doing that this coarse kitchen-maid can run so close a parallel between her life and mine?  How unwomanly and repulsive it all seems, as that man put it!  My delight and pride have been my gentleman friends, and what one of them is the better, or has a better prospect for life, because of having known me?  Could there be a worse satire on all the fine things written about woman and her influence than my hitherto vain and complacent self?”

Sooner or later conscience tells the truth to all; and the sooner the better, unless the soul arraigned is utterly weak, or else belongs essentially to the criminal classes, which require almost a miracle to reverse their evil gravitation.  Marian Vosburgh was neither weak nor criminal at heart.  Thus far she had yielded thoughtlessly, inconsiderately, rather than deliberately, to the circumstances and traditions of her life.  Her mother had been a belle and something of a coquette, and, having had her career, was in the main a good and sensible wife.  She had given her husband little trouble if not much help.  She had slight interest in that which made his life, and slight comprehension of it, but in affectionate indifference she let him go his way, and was content with her domestic affairs, her daughter, and her novel.  Marian had unthinkingly looked forward to much the same experience as her natural lot.  To-night she found herself querying:  “Are there men to-day who are not half what they might have been because of mamma’s delusive smiles?  Have any gone down into shadows darker than those cast by misfortune and death, because she permitted herself to become the light of their lives and then turned away?”

Then came the rather painful reflection:  “Mamma is not one to be troubled by such thoughts.  It does not even worry her that she is so little to papa, and that he virtually carries on his life-work alone.  I don’t see how I can continue my old life after to-night.  I had better shut myself up in a convent; yet just how I can change everything I scarcely know.”

The night proved a perturbed and almost sleepless one from the chaos and bitterness of her thoughts.  The old was breaking up; the new, beginning.

The morning found her listless, discontented, and unhappy.  The glamour had faded out of her former life.  She could not continue the tactics practised in coarse imitation by the Irish servant, who took her cue as far as possible from her mistress.  The repugnance was due as much to the innate delicacy and natural superiority of Marian’s nature as to her conscience.  Her clear, practical sense perceived that her course differed from the other only in being veneered by the refinements of her social position,—­that the evil results were much greater.  The young lady’s friends were capable of receiving more harm than the maid could inflict upon her acquaintances.