 for their prey, or at least they
complacently suppose her accessible. Wretched at home, a woman ought to bury
herself in her wretchedness, else may she be assured that not the cleverest,
wariest guard will cover her character.
    Against the husband her cause was triumphant. Against herself she decided
not to plead it, for this reason, that the preceding Court, which was the public
and only positive one, had entirely and justly exonerated her. But the holding
of her hand by the friend half a minute too long for friendship, and the
overfriendliness of looks, letters, frequency of visits, would speak within her.
She had a darting view of her husband's estimation of them in his present mood.
She quenched it; they were trifles, things that women of the world have to
combat. The revelation to a fair-minded young woman of the majority of men being
naught other than men, and some of the friendliest of men betraying confidence
under the excuse of temptation, is one of the shocks to simplicity which leave
her the alternative of misanthropy or philosophy. Diana had not the heart to
hate her kind, so she resigned herself to pardon, and to the recognition of the
state of duel between the sexes - active enough in her sphere of society. The
circle hummed with it; many lived for it. Could she pretend to ignore it? Her
personal experience might have instigated a less clear and less intrepid nature
to take advantage of the opportunity for playing the popular innocent, who runs
about with astonished eyes to find herself in so hunting a world, and wins
general compassion, if not shelter in unsuspected and unlicenced places. There
is perpetually the inducement to act the hypocrite before the hypocrite world,
unless a woman submits to be the humbly knitting housewife, unquestioningly
worshipful of her lord; for the world is ever gracious to an hypocrisy that pays
homage to the mask of virtue by copying it; the world is hostile to the face of
an innocence not conventionally simpering and quite surprised; the world prefers
decorum to honesty. »Let me be myself, whatever the martyrdom!« she cried, in
that phase of young sensation when, to the blooming woman, the putting on of a
mask appears to wither her and reduce her to the show she parades. Yet, in
common with her sisterhood, she owned she had worn a sort of mask; the world
demands it of them as the price of their station. That she had never worn it
consentingly, was the plea for now casting it off altogether, showing herself as
she was, accepting martyrdom, becoming the
