answer to his arguments in favour of the rights of men, and a clear,
dispassionate view of the rights of women.

'Miss Honora Sneyd would not admit the unqualified control of a
husband over all her actions. She did not feel that seclusion from
society was indispensably necessary to preserve female virtue, or to
secure domestic happiness. Upon terms of reasonable equality she
supposed that mutual confidence might best subsist. She said that,
as Mr. Day had decidedly declared his determination to live in
perfect seclusion from what is usually called the world, it was fit
she should decidedly declare that she would not change her present
mode of life, with which she had no reason to be dissatisfied, for
any dark and untried system that could be proposed to her. . . . One
restraint, which had acted long and steadily upon my feelings, was
now removed; my friend was no longer attached to Miss Honora Sneyd.
My former admiration of her returned with unabated ardour. . . .
This admiration was unknown to everybody but Mr. Day; ... he
represented to me the danger, the criminality of such an attachment;
I knew that there is but one certain method of escaping such dangers
--flight. I resolved to go abroad.'




CHAPTER 3

Mr. Day and Edgeworth went to France, and the latter spent nearly
two years at Lyons, where his wife joined him. Here he found
interest and occupation in some engineering works by which the
course of the Rhone was to be diverted and some land gained to