Page:The Country-House Party.djvu/12

4 mistake for love; that she might fling aside love itself, if love proved too exacting and prevented her soul expanding to that sunshine which was intended for it. Men seldom know the narrow horizon that binds a woman's world!' continued Mrs. Hayden, with a reproachful glance at her husband, 'nor how weary they get of the eternal monotony of it. Men do not recognise how justified we should be were we to throw off the yoke before our day is over. I meant to show something of this when I began my story, but I found in the end I could not do it. The old voice of the soul, that whispers to every woman, cried to Hanna Drummond, and her freedom was but a troubled dream. Here is the story, if you care to listen. I call it "The Dream of Hanna Drummond:—

Hanna Drummond walked heavily upstairs and threw her mantle aside. She loosed the strings of her bonnet, and lifting it from her head, gazed long into the glass.

'So that's the end of Hanna Drummond,' she said, looking at the fading hair that so softly framed a face not yet grown old; a face whose