I told him, “About thirty-one or two.”

“Ah!”

And then:  Did I know anything about the young man’s morals?

I assured him I had never heard a word against them.

He looked at me keenly and I remembered the words of Withers which I had heard.  Still, I knew nothing against Jevons’s morals, and I said they were all right for all I knew.

“Never mind what you know,” he answered.  “What do you think?”

I said I thought that Jevons had as clean a record as any man I knew.

“You mean,” he said, “these things are comparative?”

I said I meant I only wished my morals were as clean. (I went as far as that for Viola—­to save her.  Besides, there was Jevons to be thought of.  I was there to take a fair advantage of him, not an unfair one.)

He took another look at me that seemed to satisfy him, for he said: 
“Thank you.  That’s all I want to know.”

We smoked in silence.  Presently we went into the drawing-room “for a little music.”  Victoria played.  The Canon and Mildred and Norah sang.  Millicent went upstairs to prepare a lecture.

When the music was over Viola and Mildred and Norah and I went into the garden, and very soon Mildred and Norah drifted back into the house again and left me with Viola.

She began at once, “Well—­did you make him understand?”

I said I hadn’t had much opportunity.

Did he ask me about Bruges?  No, but he had asked me about Jevons.  I told her more or less how I had answered, and she said it was dear of me.

“But it’s no use telling them anything about me, Wally.”

I asked her, Had they said much?

She said, “No.  It’s what they think.  Or rather, what they don’t think. 
They’ll never think the same of me again.  And they’ll never trust me.”

I said, Come, it wasn’t so bad as all that.

But she stuck to it.

“There!” she said.  “Didn’t I tell you?”

Mrs. Thesiger from the drawing-room window was calling to us to come in.  The grass was damp.

“They won’t trust me even with you.”

I thought:  “Poor little Viola—­she’s burned her boats with a vengeance.”

Presently it was Bertie’s room again, and moonlight, and the Cathedral chimes.  They kept me awake all night.

* * * * *

Of course I hadn’t made them understand.  How could I?  The peculiar awfulness of their calamity was that they knew so little about it.  They didn’t know, after all, what had happened at Bruges; they didn’t know what lengths Viola had gone to.  And though they evidently thought that I knew, that wasn’t any good to them.  They couldn’t ask me what had happened at Bruges.  They couldn’t cross-question me about Viola’s “lengths.”  I couldn’t tell them that, according to my lights, nothing had happened, that Viola’s lengths were not likely to be very long.  Besides, even if I had come with the proofs of her innocence in my hands, and removed their private sorrow, that wouldn’t have repaired their public wrong.  Nobody was going to believe in Viola’s innocence.  Appearances were dead against her.