“Do you suppose insult is deliberately intended in that graceful sentiment?” asked Hadria. “Obviously not. If any woman of that time had blazed up in anger at the well-meant speech, she would have astonished and grieved her contemporaries. Aristotle doubtless professed a high respect for women who followed his precepts—as men do now when we are obedient.”
“Of course, our society in this particular has not wandered far from the Greek idea,” Miss Du Prel observed pensively.
Hadria pronounced the paradox, “The sharpness of the insult lies in its not being intended.”
Miss Du Prel could not prevail upon her to modify the assertion. Hadria pointed out that the Greeks also meant no offence in regarding their respectable women as simple reproductive agents of inferior human quality.
“And though our well-brought-up girls shrink from the frank speech, they do not appear to shrink from the ideas of the old Greeks. They don’t mind playing the part of cows so long as one doesn’t mention it.”
About eighteen months ago, the village had been full of talk and excitement in consequence of the birth of an heir to the house of Engleton, Lady Engleton’s mission in life being frankly regarded as unfulfilled during the previous three or four years, when she had disappointed the hopes of the family. Hadria listened scornfully. In her eyes, the crowning indignity of the whole affair was Lady Engleton’s own smiling acceptance of the position, and her complacent eagerness to produce the tardy inheritor of the property and honours. This expression of sentiment had, by some means, reached the Vicarage and created much consternation.
Mrs. Walker asserted that it was right and Christian of the lady to desire that which gave every one so much pleasure. “A climax of feminine abjectness!” Hadria had exclaimed in Henriette’s presence.
Miss Temperley, after endeavouring to goad her sister-in-law into the expression of jubilant congratulations, was met by the passionate declaration that she felt more disposed to weep than to rejoice, and more disposed to curse than to weep.
Obviously, Miss Temperley had reason to be uneasy about her part in bringing about her brother’s marriage.
These sudden overflows of exasperated feeling had become less frequent as time went on, but the neighbours looked askance at Mrs. Temperley. Though a powder-magazine may not always blow up, one passes it with a grave consciousness of vast stores of inflammable material lying somewhere within, and who knows what spark might set the thing spouting to the skies?