“That’s just it, Cousin Arthur. If a woman speaks out, nobody can hold her responsible. But anybody can hold her nearest male friend responsible and he must fight to maintain what she has said, whether he thinks she was right in saying it or not. The other day Jeff. Peyton--Mr. Madison Peyton’s son, you know,--was over at Wyanoke, when you had gone to Branton. So I had to entertain him.” Dorothy did not know that the youth had been sent to Wyanoke by his father for the express purpose of being entertained by herself. “I found him a pretty stupid fellow, as I always do, but as he pretends to have been a student at the University, I supposed he had read a great deal. So I talked to him about Virgil but he knew so little that I asked him if he had read ‘The Vicar of Wakefield,’ and he told me a deliberate lie. He professed a full acquaintance with that book, and presently I found out that he had never read a line of it. I was so shocked that I forgot myself. I asked him, ‘Why did you lie to me?’ It was dreadfully rude, of course, but I could not help it. Now of course he couldn’t challenge _me_ for that. But if he had been a man of spirit, he would have challenged _you_, and you see how terribly wrong I should have been to involve you in a quarrel of that kind. Of course if I had been a man, instead of a woman--if I had been answerable for my words--I should have been perfectly free to charge him with lying. But what possible right had I to risk your life in a duel by saying things that I might as well have left unsaid?” “But you said the other day,” responded Arthur, “that you did not believe in duelling?” “Of course I don’t. It is a barbarous thing. But it is the custom of our country and we can’t help it. I’ve noticed that if a man fights a duel on proper provocation, everybody says he ought not to have done it. But if he refuses to fight, everybody says he’s a coward. So, under certain circumstances, a man in Virginia who respects himself is absolutely compelled to fight. If Jefferson Peyton had asked you to meet him on account of what I said to him, you couldn’t have refused, could you, Cousin Arthur?” “I wouldn’t,” was all the answer the young man made; but he put a strong stress upon the last word. “Oh, I know you wouldn’t,” answered the girl, treating his response as quite a matter of course. “But you see now why a woman must keep silent where a man should speak out. If a man tells the truth he can be called to account for it; so if he is manly he will tell it and take the consequences. But a woman has to remember that if she tells the truth, and the truth happens to be ugly, some man must be shot at for her words.” “Dorothy,” asked Arthur, with unusual seriousness, “are you afraid of anything?” “Afraid? No. Of course not.” “If you were needed very badly for the sake of other people--even negroes--if you could save their lives and ease their sufferings, you’d want to do it, wouldn’t you?”