came. But she was not herself aware of any reservation in her manner of
accepting instruction. The trick was innate, and in no way interfered with
her faith in her friends, which was profound. She might have justified it,
however, upon her father's authority, for she once heard him say to one of
her brothers: "Find out for yourself, and form your own opinions," a
lesson which she had laid to heart also. Not that her father would have
approved of her putting it into practice. He was one of those men who
believe emphatically that a woman should hold no opinion which is not of
masculine origin, and the maxims he had for his boys differed materially
in many respects from those which he gave to his girls. But these precepts
of his were, after all, only matches to Evadne which fired whole trains of
reflection, and lighted her to conclusions quite other than those at which
he had arrived himself. In this way, however, he became her principal
instructor. She had attached herself to him from the time that she could
toddle, and had acquired from his conversation a proper appreciation of
masculine precision of thought. If his own statements were not always
accurate it was from no want of respect for the value of facts; for he was
great on the subject, and often insisted that a lesson or principle of
action is contained in the commonest fact; but he snubbed Evadne promptly
all the same on one occasion when she mentioned a fact of life, and drew a
principle of action therefrom for herself. "Only confusion comes of women
thinking for themselves on social subjects," he said, "You must let me
decide all such matters for you, or you must refer them to your husband
when you come under his control."

Evadne did not pay much attention to this, however, because she remembered
another remark of his with which she could not make it agree. The remark
was that women never had thought for themselves, and that therefore it was
evident that they could not think, and that they should not try. Now, as
it is obvious that confusion cannot come of a thing that has never been