"Most people of spirit are--till they come to handle themselves," he replied, also with a slight change of tone. "But that's just what women are never allowed to do, Mr. Winnington!" She turned suddenly red, and fronted him. "There's always some man, who claims to manage them and their affairs. We're always in leading-strings--nobody ever admits we're grown up. Why can't we be allowed like men--to stumble along our own way? If we make mistakes, let's _pay_ for them! But let us at some time in our lives--at least--feel ourselves free beings!" There was no mistaking the purport of these words. They referred clearly to her father's will, and her own position. After a moment's thought, Winnington bent forward. "I think I understand what you mean," he said gravely. "And I sympathise with it more than you imagine." Delia looked up impetuously-- "Then why, Mr. Winnington, did you consent to be my guardian?" "Because--quite honestly--because I thought I could be of more use to you perhaps than the Court of Chancery; and because your father's letter to me was one very difficult to put aside." "How could anyone in my father's state of health really judge reasonably!" cried Delia. "I daresay it sounds shocking to you, Mr. Winnington, but I can't help putting it to myself like this--Papa was always able to contrive his own life as he chose. In his Governorship he was a small king. He tried a good many experiments. Everybody deferred to him. Everybody was glad to help him. Then when his money came and the estate, nobody fettered him with conditions; nobody interfered with him. Grandpapa and he didn't agree in a lot of things. Papa was a Liberal; and Grandpapa was an awfully hot Conservative. But Grandpapa didn't appoint a trustee, or tie up the estates--or anything of that kind. It is simply and solely because I am a woman that these things are done! I am not to be allowed _my_ opinions, in _my_ life, though Papa was quite free to work for his in his life! This is the kind of thing we call tyranny,--this is the kind of thing that's driving women into revolt!" Delia had risen. She stood in what Gertrude Marvell would have called her "pythian" attitude, hands behind her, her head thrown back, delivering her prophetic soul. Winnington, as he surveyed her, was equally conscious of her beauty and her absurdity. But he kept cool, or rather the natural faculty which had given him so much authority and success in life rose with a kind of zest to its new and unaccustomed task. "May I perhaps suggest--that your father was fifty-two when he succeeded to this estate--and that you are twenty-one?" "Nearly twenty-two," she interrupted, hastily.