It may be imagined that the Divorce Courts were kept pretty lively by these innovations; it certainly had this effect for some little time; but gradually as education and the higher morality advanced the number of annulled marriages decreased.
As soon as the social plane for woman was raised she became more exacting in her requirements, preferring to remain single rather than mate with the morally weak, or otherwise unsuitable person.
To a man marriage was not the easy matter it had been to the nineteenth-century bachelor, when numbers of unemployed, or,—owing to their absurd training—hopelessly incompetent young women were to be had for the asking. But this was all changed now; a desirable wife had become as difficult to obtain as a desirable husband in previous generations; and when a man’s suit proved successful, and he had gained the object of his choice, he usually behaved in such a way towards her as gave her considerable satisfaction.
On her side too, rested a responsibility which she realised to the utmost; and willingly yielded to the man she had elected the devotion of a high-minded, unselfish affection.
Love, in its purest form was woman’s ideal, for the heart as well as the intellect was cultivated.
CHAPTER IV
‘Your wondrous, rare description, noble Earl,
Of beauteous Margaret hath astonished me.
Her virtues graced with external gifts,
Do breed love’s settled passions in my heart;