Mrs.Fred had defied this ancient and sacred tradition of the "settled" woman.

She had kept her looks; she frankly delighted in the admiration of men.

And the fact that the most captious old maid in Saint X could not find a flaw in her character as a faithful wife, aggravated the offending.

For, did not her devotion to her husband make dangerous her example of frivolity retained and flaunted, as a pure private life in an infidel made his heresies plausible and insidious?
At "almost" forty, Mrs.Hastings looked "about" thirty and acted as if she were a girl or a widow.

Each group of gods seems ridiculous to those who happen not to believe in it.