At this Quinby burst out, with an unrestrained heat that did not lower him in my estimation, though the whole of his tirade was directed exclusively against me.  I had been talking “at” him, he declared.  I might as well have been straightforward while I was about it.  He, for his part, was not afraid to take the responsibility for anything he might have said.  It was perfectly true, to begin with.  The so-called Mrs. Lascelles, who was such a friend of mine, had been the wife of a German Jew in Lahore, who had divorced her on her elopement with a Major Lascelles, whom she had left in his turn, and whose name she had not the smallest right to bear.  Quinby exercised some restraint in the utterances of these calumnies, or the whole room must have heard them, but even as it was we had more listeners than the judge when my turn came.

“I won’t give you the lie, Quinby, because I am quite sure you don’t know you are telling one,” said I; “but as a matter of fact you are giving currency to two.  In the first place, this lady is Mrs. Lascelles, for the major did marry her; in the second place, Major Lascelles is dead.”

“And how do you know?” inquired Quinby, with a touch of genuine surprise to mitigate an insolent disbelief.

“You forget,” said I, “that it was in India I knew your own informant.  I can only say that my information in all this matter is a good deal better than his.  I knew Mrs. Lascelles herself quite well out there; I knew the other side of her case.  It doesn’t seem to have struck you, Quinby, that such a woman must have suffered a good deal before, and after, taking such a step.  Or I don’t suppose you would have spread yourself to make her suffer a little more,”

And I still consider that a charitable view of his behaviour; but Quinby was of another opinion, which he expressed with his offensive little laugh as he lifted his long body from the settee.

“This is what one gets for securing a room for a man one doesn’t know!” said he.

“On the contrary,” I retorted, “I haven’t forgotten that, and I have saved you something because of it.  I happen to have saved you no less than a severe thrashing from a stronger man than myself, who is even more indignant with you than I am, and who wanted to borrow one of my sticks for the purpose!”

“And it would have served him perfectly right,” was the old judge’s comment, when the mischief-maker had departed without returning my parting shot.  “I suppose you meant young Evers, Captain Clephane?”

“I did indeed, Sir John.  I had to tell him the truth in order to restrain him.”

The old judge raised his eyebrows.

“Then you hadn’t to tell him it before?  You are certainly consistent, and I rather admire your position as regards the lady.  But I am not so sure that it was altogether fair toward the lad.  It is one thing to stand up for the poor soul, my dear sir, but it would be another thing to let a nice boy like that go and marry her!”