“Oh come, tell me. How far _would_ your ideas of old-fashioned duty carry you? Would they make you interfere with another person’s business? Would they make you make a body tell you all she knew about herself, and make you bring a body right down to the grindstone of confession, and bind her to your dictatorial law of ways and means of repentance?” Ethel laughed amiably, saying: “If you want to know my character, you would better glance at my life.” But still, with an alarmed, distrustful, quizzical look, the outgrowth of her experiences, Mrs. Mancredo said at last: “Do you think you can take better care of Reginald than I can?” “I can do my duty better than you can do my duty, but I cannot do yours; but on my way to do mine, if you are with me you ought to get some view of what your duty is, as I shall get new views from you regarding _my_ work. That seems to be the whole of the affair,” said Ethel, taking Mrs. Mancredo’s hand cordially. “Is that so? Would you not dictate to me, nor talk to others about me, nor flinch from your duty if I neglected mine?” “I only know,” said Ethelbert after a pause, “whatever comes to me to be done, I shall do, but I shall accommodate my actions to new circumstances which may arise, for I should be sorry to have anything come between Reginald and his best development, or between you and yours. The development of the individual is the point; all else is inconsiderable.” “Now look at me,” said Mrs. Mancredo, taking her hand tightly, and looking her straight in the eyes. “Remember what you have said, for I shall not forget it. Listen: I am Reginald Grove’s wife.” Ethel caught her breath, for this she had not foreseen. “Now, then, how far will you practice your personal liberty principles? How much will you leave me in perfect freedom to choose my own duty? Remember, you have said you would be sorry to have anything come between Reginald and his best development, and me and mine, and that all the rest amounts to little either way. “Now, then,” she continued, starting off again after a little pause, “if you don’t want anything to come between me and my best development, you will let me give up my life there at the hotel, and you will make the changes in your house that I suggest, and let me pay you the hotel prices, and bring along my carriage and servant John, and take me into the family on the ‘personal liberty principle’ with which you four heavenly mortals control or don’t control each other’s lives. And you will angelically mind your heaven-appointed business of evoking Regie’s lost angel, and leave me to evolve my own as best I can.” By this time Ethelbert’s beryl eyes were looking into Mrs. Mancredo’s black ones, as if this arrangement were a simple plan for a lawn party. “Why don’t you look disgusted at a woman who passes as rich Mr. Mancredo’s widow, and who is really Reginald Grove’s wife, and has never been any other man’s wife, nor anything like it, in any way to anybody!”