 the more at leisure for them,” said Margaret, “from having their minds free from plots and secrets.”

“Surely you are rather hard upon arts and devices,” said Philip. “Without more or fewer of them, we should make our world into a Palace of Truth,—see the Veillées du Château, which Matilda is reading with Miss Young. Who ever read it, that did not think the Palace of Truth the most disagreeable place in the world?”

“And why?” asked Margaret. “Not because the people in it spoke truth; but because the truth which they spoke was hatred, and malice, and selfishness.”

“And how much better,” inquired Hester, “is the truth that we should speak, if we were as true as the daylight? I hope we shall always be allowed to make mysteries of our own selfish and unkind fancies. There would be little mutual respect left if these things were told.”

“I think there would be more than ever,” said Margaret, carefully avoiding to meet her sister’s eye. “I think so many mistakes would be explained, so many false impressions set right, on the instant of their being made, that our mutual relations would go on more harmoniously than now.”

“And what would you do with the affairs now dedicated to mystery?” asked Mr Enderby. “How would you deal with diplomacy, and government, and with courtship? You surely would not overthrow the whole art of wooing? You would not doom lovers’ plots and devices?”

The ladies were all silent. Mr Enderby, however, was determined to have an answer. He addressed himself particularly to Margaret.

“You do not disapprove of the little hidden tokens with which a man may make his feelings secretly known where he wishes them to be understood;—tokens which may meet the eye of one alone, and carry no meaning to any other! You do not disapprove of a more gentle and mysterious way of saying, ‘I love you,’ than looking full in one another’s face, and declaiming it like a Quaker upon affirmation? You do not disapprove—”

“As for disapproving,” said Margaret, who chanced to perceive that Maria’s hand shook so that she could not guide her needle, and that she was therefore apparently searching for something in her work-box,—“as for disapproving, I do not pretend to judge for other people—”

She stopped short, struck with the blunder she had made. Mr Enderby hastened to take advantage of it. He said, laughing:

“Well, then, speak for yourself. Never mind other people’s case.”

“What I mean,
