But Helen dipped into the waste-paper basket, and extracted therefrom the two torn halves of Frank Vanguard's letter, which she pieced together and perused attentively. Then she folded them carefully in their envelope, also torn, and placed the whole in her apron pocket, ere she rang the bell and sailed off on her daily avocations; from all which I infer that, notwithstanding her denial, she _had_ thought about the writer's good looks, and was, at least, perfectly satisfied that his eyes had not the remotest tendency to a squint! CHAPTER IV. AMAZONS. "My dear, the Amazons were quite right." It was Mrs. Lascelles who spoke, sitting in the easiest chair of her boudoir, and listening to an account of those remarkable women, read aloud by Miss Ross. The ladies had not been studying Herodotus, amusing and improbable as are the anecdotes of that gossiping historian, but took their information from an author of later date, less quaint, more voluminous, and perhaps as little to be trusted. Miss Ross shut her book and yawned. "I think they should have gone in for man-hating altogether," she replied. "I am dead against half-measures, and I never can see why you shouldn't kick people because they are down!" "I wish I had always thought so," said the other, with something like a sigh. "We poor women must learn to take care of ourselves. Well, I am wiser now, and really, Jin, I think it's partly owing to you." Miss Ross was still thinking of the Amazons. "Why didn't they kill their prisoners at once?" she asked. "It would have been more dignified, and more--what shall I say? more _manly_ altogether." "I think the other plan was better," answered Mrs. Lascelles. "You see, they kept them long enough to make them unhappy, if they had no other motive, and then put them out of the way just as the captives were beginning to get attached to their conquerors. They don't seem to have minded mutilating _themselves_; I dare say that was very natural. Jin, I think I should like to have been an Amazon." "You're too soft-hearted," answered the other. "Now I could condemn a man to death with less compunction than you would show in ordering a child to be whipped. I have no pity for the nobler sex, as they call themselves. 'War to the knife!' that's my motto!" "I think I have been used badly enough," said Mrs. Lascelles, looking the while extremely prosperous and self-satisfied. "I am sure my early life has not been the happier for my relations with the lords of the creation. Two or three false lovers, my dear, and a bad husband, are not calculated to raise one's opinion of the race; but I am not so bitter as you are, by many degrees." "Heaven forbid!" replied Miss Ross, while a shadow passed across her dark, expressive face. "I should be sorry for any woman who could feel as I do; sorrier still if she had learnt her lesson as I did."