"I am afraid," said Aunt Maria, with conscious pride, "that the next chapter is hardly one for Annette. It deals, not without a touch of realism, with subjects which as a delineator of life I cannot ignore, but which, thank God, have no place in a young girl's existence." "Oh, Maria, how I disagree with you!" interposed Aunt Harriet before Annette could speak. "If only I had been warned when I was a young, innocent, high-spirited creature, if only I had been aware of the pitfalls, the snares, spread like nets round the feet of the young and the attractive, I should have been spared some terrible disillusionments. I am afraid I am far too modern to wish to keep girls in the total ignorance in which our dear mother brought us up. We must march with the times. There is nothing that you, being what you are, Maria, nothing that you with your high ideals could write which, however painful, it could harm Annette to hear." (This was perhaps even truer than the enunciator was aware.) "She must some time learn that evil exists, that sin and suffering are all part of life." Annette looked from the excited figure on the sofa to the dignified personage in the arm-chair, and her heart was wrung for them both. Oh! Poor dears! poor dears! Living in this shadowy world of their own in which reality never set foot, this tiny world of which Aunt Harriet spoke so glibly, which Aunt Maria described with such touching confidence. Was she going to shatter it for them?--she whom they were doing their best to guide into it, to make like themselves. "I am rather tired," she said, folding up her work. "I think I will go to bed, and then you can read the chapter together, and decide whether I can hear it later on." "It is very carefully treated, very lightly, I may say skilfully touched," said Aunt Maria urbanely, whose previous remark had been entirely conventional, and who had no intention of losing half her audience. "I think, on the whole, I will risk it. Sit down again, Annette. Let me see, how old are you?" "Twenty-three." "Many women at that age are wives and mothers. I agree with you, Harriet. The danger we elders fall into is the want of realization that the younger generation are grown up. We must not make this mistake with you, Annette, or treat you as a child any longer, but as--ahem!--one of ourselves. It is better that you should be made aware of the existence of the seamy side of life, so that later on, if you come in contact with it, your mind may be prepared. Chapter one hundred and twenty-five. _The False Position._" CHAPTER XXXIX "All other joy of life he strove to warm, And magnify, and catch them to his lip: But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship, And gazed upon him sallow from the storm." GEORGE MEREDITH.