Love-marriages, made against the will of the parents before the character is formed and while the obligations of society are still unrealized, are generally _mésalliances_ founded on passion and fancy only. A man and woman of mature age who know what they want may make a _mésalliance_, but it is made with a full understanding and deliberate choice; and, if the thing turns out badly, they can blame themselves less for precipitancy than for wrong calculation. The man of fifty who marries his cook knows what he most values in women. It is not manners and it is not accomplishments; perhaps it is usefulness, perhaps good-temper; at all events it is something that the cook has and that the ladies of his acquaintance have not, and he is content to take the disadvantages of his choice with its advantages. But the boy who runs away with his mother's maid neither calculates nor sees any disadvantages. He marries a pretty girl because her beauty has touched his senses; or he is got hold of by an artful woman who has bamboozled and seduced him. It is only when his passion has worn off that he wakes to the full consequences of his mistake, and understands then how right his parents were when they cashiered his pretty Jane so soon as they became aware of what was going on, and sent that artful Sarah to the right about--just a week too late. It is the same with girls; but in a far greater extent. If a youth's _mésalliance_ is a millstone round his neck for life, a girl's is simply destruction. The natural instinct with all women is to marry above themselves; and we know on what physiological basis this instinct stands, and what useful racial ends it serves. And the natural instinct is as true in its social as in its physiological expression. A woman's honour is in her husband; her status, her social life, are determined by his; and even the few women who, having made a bad marriage, have nerve and character enough to set themselves free from the personal association, are never able to thoroughly regain their maiden place. There is always something about them which clogs and fetters them; always a kind of doubtful and depressing aura that surrounds and influences them. If they have not strength to free themselves, they never cease to feel the mistake they have made, until the old sad process of degeneration is accomplished, and the 'grossness of his nature' has had strength to drag her down. After a time, if her ladyhood has been of a superficial kind only, a woman who has married beneath herself may ease down into her groove and be like the man she has married; if, however, she has sufficient force to resist outside influences she will not sink, and she will never cease to suffer. She has sinned against herself, her class and her natural instincts; and has done substantially a worse thing than has the boy who married his mother's maid. Society understands this, and not unjustly if harshly punishes the one while it lets the other go