'Now, I confess!'--cried Christine, making a powerful effort to suppress the last part of the sentence which was at her tongue's end, 'May one venture to ask, wherefore, major?'
'Oh yes, one may venture, countess,' answered Arwed, 'and I will most willingly respond to the question. I do not like to see women pursuing employments unsuited to their sex. The riding and hunting and baiting and shooting of ladies, always excites in me intolerable displeasure.'
'That is nothing but the quite common pride and selfishness of your sex,' said Christine with bitterness, 'which would have our's always feeble that you may the more easily keep us under the yoke.'
'Woe to you, poor women,' exclaimed Arwed, laughing, 'if you had no better defence against our imperiousness than your physical strength; you would every where come off the worse. Nevertheless, countess, your sex is more powerful than you believe it. Your most powerful talisman is your womanhood; and it is a bad exchange, when you give it up for the fame of a rifleman or hussar.'
'Give it up?' repeated Christine with great excitement.
'Nothing less,' answered Arwed. 'To override horses, to chase and kill animals, is a rough business. A man may pursue it without suffering in his character, for nature has destined him forcibly to oppose its hostile powers by contending with them for his safety and his food,--and, in doing so, he but fulfills his destiny. More tender and delicate woman has other duties. God created women to be the protegés, the tender companions of men, to soften and ennoble their fierce and intractable natures, and to be the loving mothers and guardians of their children.'
'Silence!' cried Christine, angrily.
'All the peculiar qualities, however, which naturally belong to you,' continued Arwed pleasantly, seizing Christine's hands and holding them fast, as if he feared Megret's fate, 'all, and they are the noblest which adorn your sex, must be lost in the masculine woman, and she will be very fortunate if she preserve the purity of her soul, which is in great danger, when the restraint of modest, maidenly customs is once thrown off.'
Christine started with a sudden shudder. Tears burst from her beautiful eyes, and she withdrew her hands from his.
'What is the matter, cousin?' he exclaimed, with deep sympathy.