On whom the blame?
And let the motively guilty go mourn over consequences! That Institution of Marriage was eyed.

Is it not a halting step to happiness?
It is the step of a cripple,--and one leg or the other poses for the feebler sex,--small is the matter which! And is happiness our cry?
Our cry is rather for circumstance and occasion to use our functions, and the conditions are denied to women by Marriage--denied to the luckless of women, who are many, very many: denied to Aminta, calling herself Countess of Ormont, for one, denied to Mrs.Lawrence Finchley for another, and in a base bad manner.

She had defended her good name triumphantly, only to enslave herself for life or snatch at the liberty which besmirches.
Reviewing Mrs.Lawrence, Aminta's real heart pressed forward at the beat, in tender pity of the woman for whom a yielding to love was to sin; and unwomanly is the woman who does not love: men will say it.

Aminta found herself phrasing.

'Why was she unable to love her husband ?--he is not old.' She hurried in flight from the remark to confidences imparted by other ladies, showing strange veins in an earthy world; after which, her mind was bent to rebuke Mrs.Pagnell for the silly soul's perpetual allusions to Lord Ormont's age.