triumph, she planned to utilize the new liberty at her disposal, purging any scruples from her conscience by the generous reflection that when Wilbur’s brow unbent and his lips moved freely she would forgive him and proffer him once more her conjugal counsel and sympathy.  She was firmly of the opinion that, unless he thus acknowledged his shortcomings and promised improvement, the present arrangement was completely to her liking, and that confidence and happiness between them would be utterly impossible.  She shed some tears over the thought that unkind circumstances had robbed her of the love by which she had set such store and which she, on her part, still cherished, but she comforted herself with the retort that its loss was preferable to sacrificing weakly the development of her own ideas and life to its perpetuation.

Her flush of triumph was succeeded, however, by a discontented mood, because cogitation constrained her to suspect that her social progress might not be so rapid as her first rosy visions had suggested.  She counted on being able to procure the participation of Wilbur sufficiently to preserve the appearance of domestic harmony.  This would be for practical purposes a scarcely less effective furtherance of her plans than if he were heartily in sympathy with them.  Were there not many instances where busy husbands took part in the social undertakings of their wives, merely on the surface, to preserve appearances?  The attitude of Wilbur seemed reasonably secure.  That which harassed her as the result of her reflections and efforts to plan was the unpalatable consciousness that she did not know exactly what to do, and that no one, even now that she was free, appeared eager to extend to her the hand of recognition.  She was prompt to lay the blame of this on her husband.  It was he who, by preventing her from taking advantage of the social opportunities at their disposal, had consigned her to this eddy where she was overlooked.  This seemed to her a complete excuse, and yet, though she made the most of it, it did not satisfy her.  Her helplessness angered her, and aroused her old feelings of suspicion and resentment against the fashionable crew who appeared to be unaware of her existence.  She was glad to believe that the reason they ignored her was because she was too serious minded and spiritual to suit their frivolous and pleasure-loving tastes.  Sometimes she reasoned that the sensible thing for her to do was to break away from her present life, where convention and caste trammelled her efforts, and make a name for herself as an independent soul, like Mrs. Margaret Rodney Earle and other free-born women of the Republic.  With satisfaction she pictured herself on the lecture platform uttering burning denunciation of the un-American social proclivities of this shallow society, and initiating a crusade which should sweep it from existence beneath the ban of the moral sense of the thoughtful people of the country.