It is true that parents will scold a daughter if her conduct threatens to deprive them of their gain from the bride-price; but if once they have lost hope of marrying her off, or if the bride-price has been spent, they manifest complete indifference to her conduct.

Maidens who no longer expect marriage are not restrained at all, if they observe decorum it is only out of respect to custom." Westermarck (_History of Human Marriage_, pp.

123 et seq.) also shows the connection between the high estimates of virginity and the conception of woman as property, and returning to the question in his later work, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ (vol.ii, Ch.

XLII), after pointing out that "marriage by purchase has thus raised the standard of female chastity," he refers (p.

437) to the significant fact that the seduction of an unmarried girl "is chiefly, if not exclusively, regarded as an offense against the parents or family of the girl," and there is no indication that it is ever held by savages that any wrong has been done to the woman herself.