The Pettifers lived in a big house of the Georgian period at the bottom of an irregular square in the middle of the little town.  Mrs. Pettifer was sitting in a room facing the garden at the back with the pamphlet on a little table beside her.  She sprang up as Dick was shown into the room, and before he could utter a word of greeting she cried: 

“Dick, you are the one person I wanted to see.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.  Sit down.”

Dick obeyed.

“Dick, I believe you are the only person in the world who has any control over your father.”

“Yes.  Even in my pinafores I learnt the great lesson that to control one’s parents is the first duty of the modern child.”

“Don’t be silly,” his aunt rejoined sharply.  Then she looked him over.  “Yes, you must have some control over him, for he lets you remain in the army, though an army is one of his abominations.”

“Theoretically it’s a great grief to him,” replied Dick.  “But you see I have done fairly well, so actually he’s ready to burst with pride.  Every sentimental philosopher sooner or later breaks his head against his own theories.”

Mrs. Pettifer nodded her head in commendation.

“That’s an improvement on your last remark, Dick.  It’s true.  And your father’s going to break his head very badly unless you stop him.”

“How?”

“Mrs. Ballantyne.”

All the flippancy died out of Dick Hazlewood’s face.  He became at once grave, wary.

“I have been hearing about him,” continued Mrs. Pettifer.  “He has made friends with her—­a woman who has stood in the dock on a capital charge.”

“And has been acquitted,” Dick Hazlewood added quietly and Mrs. Pettifer blazed up.

“She wouldn’t have been acquitted if I had been on the jury.  A parcel of silly men who are taken in by a pretty face!” she cried, and Dick broke in: 

“Aunt Margaret, I am sorry to interrupt you.  But I want you to understand that I am with my father heart and soul in this.”

He spoke very slowly and deliberately and Mrs. Pettifer was utterly dismayed.

“You!” she cried.  She grew pale, and alarm so changed her face it was as if a tragic mask had been slipped over it.  “Oh, Dick, not you!”

“Yes, I. I think it is cruelly hard,” he continued with his eyes relentlessly fixed upon Mrs. Pettifer’s face, “that a woman like Mrs. Ballantyne, who has endured all the horrors of a trial, the publicity, the suspense, the dread risk that justice might miscarry, should have afterwards to suffer the treatment of a leper.”

There was for the moment no room for any anger now in Mrs. Pettifer’s thoughts.  Consternation possessed her.  She weighed every quiet firm word that fell from Dick, she appreciated the feeling which gave them wings, she searched his face, his eyes.  Dick had none of his father’s flightiness.  He was level-headed, shrewd and with the conventions of his times and his profession.  If Dick spoke like this, with so much certitude and so much sympathy, why then—­She shrank from the conclusion with a sinking heart.  She became very quiet.