"The woman--her name is Mrs. Stuart--notwithstanding her disastrous marriage, seems to me distinctly superior. She came to Benham some six or seven years ago, and I knew her a little at St. Stephen's before she was a wife. Indeed, I married them, and made some inquiries at the time concerning the husband's circumstances, but learned nothing to his discredit. She has found him to be a godless, unscrupulous person with drinking habits, and recently he has deserted her on the grandiose plea that they would be happier apart. She will be happier; I am sure of that; but I have been exercised as to how to enable her to become self-supporting. She is called to higher usefulness than scrubbing or plain sewing, but though I have discerned in her capabilities and refinement, she is not at present equipped for any active employment." "Which only tends to show, my friend, that every woman"--Mrs. Wilson paused an instant--"every woman who has not independent means of her own, I mean, should be educated to be self-supporting--should have some definite bread-winning occupation which would render her independent of the man she marries in case he dies or misbehaves. I was thinking the other day that a society formed to advocate this doctrine before clubs of girls as a condition of marriage would prove efficacious." Mr. Prentiss nodded. "It is certainly the duty of Christian society to provide additional safeguards against the consequences of improvident wedlock. In this particular instance, the young woman plighted her troth while she was studying to become a kindergarten teacher. She was a country doctor's daughter, and is gentle and refined, as well as intelligent in appearance--one of those lithe, tense American personalities in which the spirit appears to burn at the expense of the body, but which, like the willow, bend but do not break under the stress of life." "She sounds interesting, and I do not see that she has been to blame. We must raise a fund for her. With how large a subscription shall I head the list?" Though Mrs. Wilson gave freely on merely charitable grounds, she gave with more enthusiasm when the objects of her bounty had not offended her sense of the social fitness of things. The clergyman put out his hand. "That wouldn't do exactly, I think. She is not too proud to let us help her for a few weeks with coal and groceries until she can earn for herself. She realizes that she must be sensible, if only for the children's sake. She has an independent simplicity of nature and clearness of perception which would stand in the way, I fear, of her accepting a donation such as you have in mind; though I should dearly love to allow you to pay off the encumbrances on their house, which, owing to her husband's rascalities have eaten up her little home--her patrimony. But I am sure she would refuse."