"It is my intention to take no notice of it whatever."
"You have not even acknowledged it?" she asked, timidly.
"A line--in the third person."
"Edward thinks Lady Coryston most unwise--"
"So she is--most unwise!" cried Lord William, warmly. "Coryston has every
right to complain of her."
"You think she has done wrong?"
"Certainly. A woman has no right to do such things--whatever her son may
be. For a woman to take upon herself the sole direction and disposal of
such properties as the Coryston properties is to step outside the bounds
of her sex; it is to claim something which a woman ought not to
claim--something altogether monstrous and unnatural!"
Lord William's thin features had flushed under a sudden rush of feeling.
His wife could not help the sudden thought, "But if we had had an infidel
or agnostic son?"
Aloud she said, "You don't think his being such a Radical, so dreadfully
extreme and revolutionary, justifies her?"
"Not at all! That was God's will--the cross she had to bear. She interferes
with the course of Providence--presumptuously interferes with it--doing
evil that what she conceives to be good may come. A woman must persuade
men by gentleness--not govern them by force.
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