When she did contrive to find any answer to that question as to what she should do with her life,--or rather what she would wish to do with it if she were a free agent, it was generally of a political nature. She was not so far advanced as to think that women should be lawyers and doctors, or to wish that she might have the privilege of the franchise for herself; but she had undoubtedly a hankering after some second-hand political manoeuvering. She would have liked, I think, to have been the wife of the leader of a Radical opposition, in the time when such men were put into prison, and to have kept up for him his seditious correspondence while he lay in the Tower. She would have carried the answers to him inside her stays,--and have made long journeys down into northern parts without any money, if the cause required it. She would have liked to have around her ardent spirits, male or female, who would have talked of "the cause," and have kept alive in her some flame of political fire. As it was, she had no cause. Her father's political views were very mild. Lady Macleod's were deadly conservative. Kate Vavasor was an aspiring Radical just now, because her brother was in the same line; but during the year of the love-passages between George and Alice, George Vavasor's politics had been as conservative as you please. He did not become a Radical till he had quarrelled with his grandfather. 
When she did manage to find any answer to that question of what she should do with her life, it was generally of a political nature. She was not so far advanced as to think that women should be lawyers and doctors, or to wish for the vote; but she undoubtedly hankered after some second-hand political manuvering. She would have liked to have around her ardent spirits, male or female, who talked of "the cause," and kept alive in her some flame of political fire.
As it was, she had no cause. Her father's political views were very mild. Lady Macleod's were deadly conservative. Kate Vavasor was an aspiring Radical just now, because her brother was; but during the year of the love-passages between George and Alice, George Vavasor's politics had been as conservative as you please. He did not become a Radical till he quarrelled with his grandfather.
