‘It is not necessary for me to explain what I think. It is absurd to think we have secured anything, by any arrangements we can make. We can but act for the best, and await the result. You have lived long enough in our country to know that our marriage arrangements and our ideas upon these questions are quite different from those which prevail in yours,’ said madame, with a scarcely concealed sneer. ‘I thank the good God that it is so. I may be prejudiced, but I prefer the absolute obedience to parents, and the retiring modesty which characterizes the young girls of my country, to the boldness and forwardness which one sees in the English, and more so, if possible, in the Americans,’ said Signora Dietrich, clearly and calmly. ‘I have repeatedly heard that no harm comes of the freedom you accord your girls. I do not believe it. I have seen many of them, sitting round my own table, as well as in public places and in my friends’ houses. There is a hardihood, a boldness, a masculine roughness, about them which is hateful to me,’ she went on, with what was evidently the most sincere and intense conviction. Minna saw that she was telling the truth now, at least. ‘They walk alone in the streets,’ pursued the signora. ‘No girl can do that without bad consequences. It is simply impossible. I do not blame the girls. I pity them. They did not make the institutions of their country, and are not answerable for them; but if they knew what graces would be added to them, how much they would gain in charm and attractiveness, had they but the modesty and bashfulness of our own Italian girls, they would of their own accord refuse to do the things which we find so atrocious. Once for all, signora, understand that I know the customs of our countries are different, and that I prefer those of my own. In your country a girl is said to choose for herself--a husband, I mean. The result is, there are more unhappy old maids in England than in any other country on the face of the earth. Perhaps they enjoy themselves, or think they do, in the exercise of their freedom, while they are still young and the world is fair to them; but they repent it bitterly afterwards, and I have heard more than one truth-speaking English mother wish that there was something more like our system prevailing at home. In your country you arrange marriages secretly and often unsuccessfully, because it is considered a shame for it to be acknowledged that a girl wants a husband. With us it is an acknowledged fact that only through having a husband can she gain any position. Ours is the more honest method of the two. An unmarried woman is here an anomaly; her position is wretched, her privileges _nil_. It is the duty of every good mother to provide early against the possibility of any such lot befalling her daughter. As much her duty,’ continued the signora with emphasis, ‘as to bring her up to be modest and virtuous. Do that while she is still a child. When she is older give her a husband.