‘No,’ said she, coldly. ‘You are quite mistaken. Whatever pleasures and enjoyments I have had in my life have been procured for me by the kindness of Mrs. Mallory. She has been so good to me!’ She looked at him with eyes tragic in the earnestness of their expression. Sebastian, glancing down the table, saw that Hugo’s eyes were fixed upon her in a perfect trance of admiration. ‘Then you have never been abroad?’ said he. ‘I--no! I have been nowhere except to London once or twice--oh, and to Brighton with Mrs. Mallory. I don’t want to go anywhere.’ ‘You are such a home-bird?’ He saw immediately that he had asked an unfortunate question. The blood rushed over her face as she replied, again coldly, ‘Oh no! I think all that stuff about “home, sweet home,” and that, is the most wearisome nonsense imaginable. I hate it.... Did you study the position of women at all when you were abroad?’ Sebastian looked at her. She was perfectly grave, serious, and judicial. The ‘Woman Question’ had not been forced so far to the front in 1861 as in 1878, and Sebastian was proportionately surprised to hear that question from so young, rich, and beautiful a woman as Helena Spenceley. ‘I’m afraid I was rather remiss in that respect. But one sees their position without studying it, I think.’ ‘And what do you think about it? Is it what it ought to be? But that is a foolish question. It is not what it ought to be, anywhere. It never will be what it ought to be, until women themselves rise and refuse any longer to submit to their own degradation. Don’t you think so?’ ‘Really I am afraid I have not thought much at all upon the question.’ ‘I suppose the idea has not yet penetrated to France and Germany. It will have to come, though, sooner or later. The German woman, for instance--is she in bonds, or emancipated?’ ‘As how?’ ‘Is the German woman the slave of the German man, or has she a position of her own?’ A malign spirit took possession of Sebastian. Mrs. Mallory and Hugo were both listening to the discussion, Mrs. Mallory with a shade of anxiety on her face. Sebastian, after a pause, as if he were profoundly considering the question, said, ‘I should say that she combined both those conditions--that she was very decidedly the slave of the German man, and at the same time had a distinct position of her own.’ ‘Really! I wish I had brought my note-book. Pray explain!’ ‘The German woman’s thoughts are, if I may use such an expression, directed manwards, _Mann_ being, you know, her word for husband. Her thoughts, then, are directed _Mann_-wards from her earliest youth--from the time when she begins to go to school....’ ‘Horrible!’ said Helena, her eyes fixed in grave earnest upon his face, so that his gravity was sorely tried. ‘Horrible! Well?’ ‘I don’t know how much or how little true the report maybe about her beginning in early youth to prepare her trousseau.’ ‘Disgusting!’