This made an entire change in Anne’s temper and disposition for the evening. Her mind was full of this question. When she went downstairs she suffered a great many stories to be told in her presence to which, on previous occasions, she would have turned a deaf ear; and it was astonishing how many corresponding cases seem to exist in society--the women ‘doing their duty’ weakly, giving in to the influence of some mercenary parent, abandoning love and truth for money and luxury; the men withdrawing embittered, disgusted, no doubt to jibe at women, perhaps to hate them; to sink out of constancy into misanthropy, into the rusty loneliness of the old bachelor. Her heart grew sad within her as she pondered. Was it to be her fate to vindicate all women, to show what a woman could do? but for the moment she felt herself too deeply disgusted with her sex to think of defending them from any attack. To be sure, there was that shadow in her picture, that fluctuation, that uncomfortable balance of which she was just conscious--Jim who, perhaps, would not have wanted to marry Keziah, though he loved her; and the others who could not afford to commit any imprudence, who could marry only when there was a fortune on what Mrs. Mountford would call ‘the other side.’ Anne felt herself cooped in, in the narrowest space, not knowing where to turn; ‘who could marry only when there was money on the other side.’ Why, this had been said of Cosmo! Anne laughed to herself, with an indignation and wrath, slightly, very slightly, tempered by amusement. Where Cosmo was concerned she could not tolerate even a smile. CHAPTER XIII. HEATHCOTE MOUNTFORD.