"Yet you have the audacity to ask me if I condone creatures whose real aim is to reverse God's decree of the sexes? Trix thinks I should like them locked up in insane asylums? By no means. I should prefer to see all such 'removed' by the methods you men employ when brutes become afflicted with rabies and glanders. I am an old woman, Mr. Cleveden, but I do object to the way in which you 'scientists' dispense with conventional verbal draperies in discussing some questions. After all is said, I presume that 'truth' you are worshipping must wear clothes, and there is no need to confiscate her garments. Moreover, you are not to believe for one instant that Miss Roberts means half of the idiotic rubbish she talks. Girls nowadays think it _chic_ to affect fads, but Trix is no more a 'new woman' than I am a winged saint. Noel, what is the order of the morning?" "The senator and the professor wish to fish; Stapleton and I are bound to the stable and kennel, and later to the billiard table to settle an old debt; Mr. Hull, Eglah, and Miss Beatrix will go out on the launch, and the phaeton and your ponies will take you and Mrs. Mitchell to see the finest views of the lake and hills." "I much prefer to see your dogs and watch your billiard game, if I may," said Miss Roberts, picking from the table vase some scarlet poppies that she fastened in her belt. "Miss Manning, do come with us on the lake; the day is so lovely." Eglah laid an appealing hand on the grey silk sleeve, and Miss Katrina's keen eyes softened. "You are very good to want a crusty old woman as ballast, but I am not fond of the water. The wind is no respecter of grey hairs, takes such impertinent liberties with my maidenly curls, and, beside, if an accident should occur I can swim only as far as a cannon ball might, and of course in an emergency Mr. Hull would devote himself exclusively to saving me, hence you would probably drown. Thank you, Miss Kent, but Mrs. Mitchell and I shall do our best to strangle time till luncheon." During that long drive Eliza was kept constantly on guard, parrying questions that betrayed an earnest curiosity relative to Mr. Herriott's standing in the senator's family; and she readily divined that Eglah was considered a formidable obstacle to a marriage long desired between their host and Beatrix Roberts, the youngest of several unmarried daughters whose father was Miss Manning's second cousin. "And why do you think Noel will never marry?" "Of course, madam, I can only conjecture; but from what I have seen of Mr. Herriott, I think he is very happy as he is, and if he desired or intended to wed any one, he would scarcely be so eager to renew his travels in distant lands." "And Miss Kent? Lovely, refined-looking woman, but cold as a frozen mill pond. We hear she has had some fine offers. The world wonders for whom she is waiting."