Mrs. MacGregor was an intellectual woman. She had not been born that way; she had deliberately achieved it. Nature had denied her personal charms. Her forehead was high and broad, and no amount of coaxing was sufficient to induce her straight, black hair to drape itself in a graceful suggestion of a Psychic brow. Being denied Psyche, she boldly assumed Minerva and bent her energies toward living the part. In her youth, women's colleges were not, and even if they had been, the straitened circumstances of the rural lawyer whose misfortune it was to be her father, would have denied her the privileges they offered. Having exhausted the fount of wisdom whose waters were curbed by the local female seminary, she turned on her father with the filial affection of youthful arachnids, who upon being hatched into life, suck their parent dry and then leave the useless skeleton and strike out into their individual careers. Under his tuition, she learned to translate Virgil, to construe Homer and to solve equations in a way that filled his harrowed soul with pride. She mastered the seductive syllogisms of Plato and Socrates, descended on Kant and gaining confidence, began on her own account to rattle the dry bones of scholastic philosophy till their rhythmic clatter suggested the wisdom that close attention denied. Eunice mated with another aspiring soul. This other was a brilliant alumnus from one of the leading New England universities. He was poetic and soulful; but at the same time erratic and uncertain. These latter attributes were even more pronounced after the marriage than before. Eunice had deliberately cut him out from the bunch, to use the vaquero's expression, and, to continue the figure, had adroitly roped him. The roping in had resulted very shortly in mutual disenthralment. The result was frequent and prolonged separations, on which occasion, each went his own way. Eunice, on her part, enjoyed a satisfaction which was ever present. She used the "Mrs." as a kind of letter of marque which enabled her to make piratical descents upon society in general in a manner which would not be tolerated in the more attractive but often compromising "Miss." She sought the acquaintance of professors, judges and governors in her own country, and gilded titles in foreign lands.