Sylvia had her way, and talked things out with the agonised Celeste.  And the next day came Aunt Varina, hardly able to contain herself.  “Oh, Sylvia, such a horrible thing!  To hear such words coming from your little sister’s lips—­like the toads and snakes in the fairy story!  To think of these ideas festering in a young girl’s brain!” And then again:  “Sylvia, your sister declares she will never go to a party again!  You are teaching her to hate men!  You will make her a STRONG-MINDED woman!”—­that was another phrase they had summing up a whole universe of horrors.  Sylvia could not recall a time when she had not heard that warning.  “Be careful, dear, when you express an opinion, always end it with a question:  ‘Don’t you think so?’ or something like that, otherwise, men may get the idea that you are ’STRONG-MINDED’!”

Sylvia, in her girlhood, had heard vague hints and rumours which now she was able to interpret in the light of her experience.  In her courtship days she had met a man who always wore gloves, even in the hottest weather, and she had heard that this was because of some affliction of the skin.  Now, talking with the young matrons of her own set, she learned that this man had married, and had since had to take to a wheel-chair, while his wife had borne a child with a monstrous deformed head, and had died of the ordeal and the shock.

Oh, the stories that one uncovered—­right in one’s own town, among one’s own set—­like foul sewers underneath the pavements!  The succession of deceased generations, of imbeciles, epileptics, paralytics!  The innocent children born to a life-time of torment; the women hiding their secret agonies from the world!  Sometimes women went all through life without knowing the truth about themselves.  There was poor Mrs. Valens, for example, who reclined all day upon the gallery of one of the most beautiful homes in the county, and showed her friends the palms of her hands, all covered with callouses and scales, exclaiming:  “What in the world do you suppose can be the matter with me?” She had been a beautiful woman, a “belle” of “Miss Margaret’s” day; she had married a man who was rich and handsome and witty—­and a rake.  Now he was drunk all the time, and two of his children had died in hospital, and another had arms that came out of joint, and had to be put in plaster of Paris for months at a time.  His wife, the one-time darling of society, would lie on her couch and read the Book of Job until she knew it by heart.

And could you believe it, when Sylvia came home, ablaze with excitement over the story, she found that the only thing that her relatives were able to see in it was the Book of Job!  Under the burden of her afflictions the woman had become devout; and how could anyone fail to see in this the deep purposes of Providence revealed?  “Verily,” said “Miss Margaret,” “’whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.’  We are told in the Lord’s Word that ’the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generations,’ and do you suppose the Lord would have told us that, if He had not known there would be such children?”