Katherine felt gladdened by the little act of kindness. She thanked Felicia, and went about the room collecting a few vases. “Arrange them for me, dear, whilst I finish my hair.” She returned to the looking-glass, and Felicia remained by the table busy with the flowers. “I went as far as the library with Mr. Chetwynd,” said Felicia. “I told him he ought not to go out to-day, but he would go. When 'Raine,' as he calls him, comes, I shall have to talk to him seriously about his father.” “The son has definitely settled to come, then?” asked Katherine, with a hair-pin between her lips. “Oh, yes. Mr. Chetwynd can talk of nothing else. He will be here quite soon.” “It will be a good thing,” said Katherine. “Yes; it will do the dear old man good.” Ordinarily Katherine would have smiled at the ingenuousness of the reply; but this morning her nerves were unstrung. “I wasn't thinking of him. I was thinking of ourselves--us women.” “I wonder what he'll be like,” said Felicia. “What does it matter? He will be a man.” “Oh, it does matter. If he is not nice--” “My dear child,” said Katherine, wheeling round, “it does not signify whether he has the face of an ogre and the manners of a bear. He will be a man; and it is a man that we want among us!” The girl shrank away. To look upon mankind as necessary elements in life had never before occurred to her. She would have been quite as excited if a nice girl had been expected at the pension. “But surely--” she stammered. Katherine divined her thought; but she was too much under the power of her mood to laugh it away. “No!” she cried, with a scorn that she felt to be unjust--and that very consciousness made her accent more passionate. “We don't want a man to come so that one of us can marry him by force! God forbid! Most of us have had enough of marrying and giving in marriage. Heaven help me, I am not as bad as that yet, to throw myself into the arms of the first man who came, so that he could carry me away from this Aceldama. But we want a man here to make us feel ashamed of the meannesses and pettinesses that we women display before each other, and to make us hide them, and appear before each other as creatures to respect. Women are the lesser race; we cannot exist by ourselves; we become flaccid and backboneless and small--oh, so small and feeble! I get to despise my sex, to think there is nothing, nothing in us; no reserve of strength, nothing but a mass of nerves and soft, flabby flesh. Oh, my dear child, you don't know it yet--let us hope you never will know it--this craving for a man, the self-contempt of it, to crave for nothing more but just to touch the hem of his garment to work the miracle of restoring you to the dignity of your womanhood. Ah!”