Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/62

36 her down, and at the same time giving such licence to really bad women, whom society cannot apparently do without. 'Tis "one man may steal a horse, and another may not look over the hedge." If a woman fell down in the mud with her nice white clothes on, and had a journey to go, she would not lie down and wallow in the mud; she would jump up, and wash herself clean at the nearest spring, and be very careful not to fall again, and reach her journey's end safely. But other women do not allow that; they must haul out buckets of the mud, and pour it over the fallen one, that there may be no mistake about it at all.

Then men seem to find a wondrous charm in poaching on other men's preserves (though a poacher of birds gets terrible punishments, once upon a time hanging), as if their neighbours' coverts afforded better shooting than their own manors. When I went to London, I had no idea of the matrimonial market; I should have laughed at it just as much as an unmarrying man would. I was interested in the fast girls who amused themselves at most extraordinary lengths, not meaning to marry the man; and at the slower ones labouring day and night for a husband of some sort, without any success. I heard a lady one day say to her daughter, "My dear, if you do not get off during your first season, I shall break my heart." Our favourite men joined us in walks and rides, came into our opera-box, and barred all the waltzes; but it would have been no fun to me to have gone on as some girls did, because I had no desire to reach the happy goal, either properly or improperly.