"She is beautiful! _beautiful_! I am charmed. We shall have her with
us--a beautiful young woman would popularize our cause beyond anything.
But how would Cecil approve of that?" whispered Lady Angleby as she
toiled into the adjoining room with the help of her host's arm.

"Mr. Cecil Burleigh is wise and prudent. He will know how to temporize
with the vagaries of his womankind," said the squire. But he was highly
gratified by the complimentary appreciation of his granddaughter.

"Vagaries, indeed! The surest signs of sound and healthy progress that
have shown themselves in this generation."

Lady Angleby mounted her hobby. She was that queer modern development, a
democrat skin-deep, born and bred in feudal state, clothed in purple and
fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, and devoted colloquially to
the regeneration of the middle classes. The lower classes might now be
trusted to take care of themselves (with the help of the government and
the philanthropists), but such large discovery was being made of
frivolity, ignorance, and helplessness amongst the young women of the
great intermediate body of the people that Lady Angleby and a few select
friends had determined, looking for the blessing of Providence on their
endeavors, to take them under their patronage.

"It is," she said, "a most hopeful thing to see the discontent that is
stirring amongst young women in this age, because an essential
preliminary to their improvement is the conviction that they have the
capacity for a freer, nobler life than that to which they are bound by
obsolete domestic traditions. Let us put within the reach of every young
girl an education that shall really develop her character and her