air or a fish in the water, finding enough for herself there without desiring anything besides. Perhaps there might lie behind some concealed cause, which we may

discover on some future day.

We will now accompany her light step to a group of ladies, to whom we, a few moments ago, saw the eyes of two gentlemen directed, assaying their worth. It was thus that some young girls talked of the party at which they were assembled.

"Ah, how gay it will be here! Quite charmingly gay. But don't you think that the bride elect looks very grave, and her lover very stupid?"

"Yes; this match is, on her side, a mere money match. There was another whom she liked much better; but Von Tackjern is rich, and she has accepted him to please her family."

"Poor girl! If I had been in her case I would have had Lieutenant M. He is so handsome, and so agreeable." "Excepting when he is a little-tipsy, which he is. sometimes."

"Oh, but then he is so very charming to ladies. He is so very nice! It really becomes him to be a little. 'half-seas-over.""

"I would not thank you for a husband half-seas-over, let him be ever so charming. No, much rather Von Tackjern for me; less charming but more sober. That will certainly be no life half-seas-over, but neither will there be any ruin. I know nothing in the world worse than ruin."

"There are in the world many kinds of ruin. But what does Hertha say about it?'

The young lady now appealed to was the same that we heard spoken of before, "with the fine figure, but who looked so deucedly positive." A remarkably noble person and rich golden hair were, in fact, the only things. which agreeably distinguished her. A cloud seemed to

envelope her whole being, and gave a sort of cloudy and unpleasant air to her otherwise regular features. She sate silent and indifferent, immovable almost as a statue, and apparently lifeless. If roses had ever bloomed upon her cheeks they had already faded, together with the spring-time of youth; a grey monotonous tint lay on her whole countenance: the eyelashes drooped heavily over the dark, inanimate eyes. Her dress was distinguished by its simplicity and homeliness. It bore not the slightest superfluous ornament, yet it fitted her exquisite form with the nicest exactitude.

At the words "What does Hertha think about it?" she slightly turned her head, and said coldly :

"I think it is a miserable state of things where a good and charming girl cannot have any other choice than to marry a man half-seas-over, or a man without a heart, and who evidently does not trouble himself much about her." The young girls laughed, and said in a low voice:

"Hertha speaks plain enough! She is not afraid of saying what she thinks."

"Afraid!" exclaimed Hertha; "no, I am not afraidnot now, at least."

"But, my dear Hertha," said, anxiously, a little elderly lady, who was incessantly twiddling her fingers as if she were winding yarn, or unravelling a tangled skein, "one must think a little, though, about what people may say. Besides, just remember! Eva Dufva has no fortune, and will be so well provided for all her days."

"I think," said Hertha, with the same cold indifference as before, "that it is humiliating for a girl to marry merely to be well provided for. Much more honourable would it be for her to help to provide for those whom she loves. That it seems to me is far preferable, is an honour."

"Ah," returned the little old lady, whose countenance and whole person had a resemblance to a ravelled

skein, "now Hertha is again coming out with her odd ideas."

"She is quite right," said a lady in the circle; marriage is frequently unhappy because girls don't marry themselves to souls, or hearts, but to-purses."

"No, no," sighed a pale young woman, "not to purses, but to dreams, and that is not much better, at least for the happiness of the heart. One sees so much that is beautiful in him one loves; one sees in him the ideal about which one has dreamed, and which is to elevate one to the good and the great. One fancies that one shall find a God, and one finds-" here she suddenly checked. herself, while a faint crimson suffused her pale countenance, and she merely added-" and one finds that which one did not expect."

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But, my dear Emily," said the elder lady, smiling, "if we do not find gods in our husbands, neither do they, indeed, find goddesses in us. And men are, in a general way, much better informed, and much more thoroughly educated than women,-that even you must concede, Hertha."

"They know much more, perhaps," replied Hertha, "but it is not the fault of the women that there are few things which they can learn, and even those few so seldom thoroughly. But even then, are men more just, more reasonable, more high-minded than women? Do they think and act more from the innermost of life? In a word, have they more true human culture?

"But do women in a general way possess this?" asked one of the ladies, in a depreciating tone.

"They would perhaps possess this, and might even impart it," replied Hertha, "if their feeling for the innermost of life obtained-life, truth. But it is not developed, and therefore both sexes remain alike trammelled and fundamentally uncultured."

"Nay then, Hertha has a regular frenzy to-day, quite

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first rate!" said the young girls, smiling. "Only think, if the gentlemen heard you !-You will certainly never be married, Hertha."

"Well, and what then?" said Hertha, bluntly, but at the same time half smiling. "Is marriage, in a general way, so happy in this world, that the highest happiness may be considered as being found in marriage?"

Ah, no," said the pale young lady, with a sigh, "but it makes us mothers, and in that way it gives us a rich and deep experience of life, which can never be the lot of an unmarried, childless woman."

The young girls were quite silent, as if struck by the truth of these words.

Hertha said, "All married women have not children. And is there not a peculiar, rich experience, a deep insight into life, which can alone be the portion of the unmarried woman?"

Hertha's voice betrayed an inward emotion, as she continued:

:

"If our education were not so utterly miserable, and the object of our lives so utterly poverty-stricken and circumscribed; if we were early instructed, instead of seeking for support out of ourselves, to seek for it in our own breasts, in our own powers; if we were able to devote life and life's energies to great and noble purposes; if we were permitted to listen to the inner voice, and follow its inspirations rather than all kinds of opinions around us; if we were allowed to do the work which we should love to do, then I am certain that we should become noble and even happy, should be lawgivers to ourselves and even to others."

"Good gracious! my dear Hertha, do you wish that ladies should be lawyers, or perhaps attorney-generals, and sit on the high seat of justice?" said the little old lady, working with her fingers more nervously than ever, and evidently very uneasy.

"Not exactly so," replied Hertha, half smiling; "but rather-more than that."

"What more? what more?" asked many ladies in the group, smiling and inquisitive.

Hertha was silent for a moment, and then said, whilst a faint crimson lighted up her cheek, though the melodious voice continued calm as a tranquilly heaving wave:

"In the old times it was believed that something great and deep was indwelling in woman, which could not be fully developed unless she remained alone, alone with the Divinity. Then even women were priestesses in the service of the holy, of the divine. This belief is now lost. Now people merely wish that young girls should be 'sweet girls,' accomplished and so on, that they may get married as soon as possible, it matters little with whom, so that he can but provide well for his wife. This is a miserable view of life and of the destiny of woman, degrading to women and perhaps still more so to men. For the blame of it lies very much in womanly cowardice, but still more in the want of justice and high-mindedness of man; and he lowers himself in the same proportion as he lowers us."

"Nay, you are now going too far, dear Hertha!" exclaimed the little old lady, writhing in agony: "consider what you are saying. Things don't go on in this world as in le palais de la Verité. You will make yourself detested both by gentlemen and ladies."

"I know it," said Hertha, with her hands crossed, and the calmness as of a sybil.

"And only think if any of the gentlemen here heard you! they would be so angry at you! you would never be invited to the balls. You'll be getting into the newspapers; you'll have, like me, a lawsuit on your shoulders. It does not answer, speaking one's mind so freely-you'll make yourself and all of us unhappy."

"Have you, then, so bad an opinion of us, as to believe