You yourself told me that I had a natural gift for designing, and I am anxious to turn it to some account.

I believe I can make a very good milliner, and I want to try." "But what would Madame Fowler, your mother-in-law, say to this?
Surely no one would want to earn her living unless she was obliged to." For Madame had known life, as she often remarked, and the knowledge so patiently acquired had gone far to confirm her natural suspicion of human nature.

She had got on, as she observed in confidential moments, by believing in nobody; and this skepticism, which was fundamental and rooted in principle, had inspired her behaviour not only to her patrons, but to her husband, her children, her domestic servants, her tradespeople, and the policeman at the corner.

Thirty years ago she had suspected the entire masculine world of amorous designs upon her person; to-day, secretly numbering her years at sixty-two, and publicly acknowledging forty-five of them, she suspected the same world of equally active, if less romantic, intentions regarding her purse.

And if she distrusted men, she both distrusted and despised women.