We were but a few miles on our way, when the incident before referred to took place. This naturally led the conversation to my sister Maud, for whom I once had performed a similar service. The theme thus started proved of such interest, that we found ourselves near our destination almost before we were aware.
"It is difficult for me to conceive of any one voluntarily leading such a life as that." said Reva, after obtaining from me a detailed account of the education, amusements, and occupations of a fashionable young lady of the nineteenth century. "To live in enforced idleness during the intervals between a round of exciting pleasures, with no stated occupation but that of devising and putting on a costume that must have rendered life a burden, seems to me a strange perversion of gifts and opportunities. As you tell of it, it sounds like an elaborate device for stunting by disuse every power of mind and body."
She kindled, however, with admiration towards those noble women of whom I told her, who putting aside ease and pleasure, disregarding even social prejudice, devoted
268
