“Why use words like that?  She’s not ruined, any more than thousands of other women.”

“I’m ashamed of you, Raymond.  I hope to God you’ve never said a thing so base as that to anybody but me.  And if I thought you meant it, I think it would break my heart.  But you don’t mean it.  You loved the girl and you are an honourable man without a shadow on your good name so far.  You loved Sabina, and you do love her, and if you said you didn’t a thousand times, I should not believe it.  You’re chivalrous and generous, and that’s the precious point about you.  Granted that she made a mistake, is her mistake to wreck her whole life?  Just think how she felt—­what a shock you gave her.  You part with her on Saturday the real Raymond, fully conscious that you must marry her at once—­for her own honour and yours.  Then on Sunday, you are harsh and cruel—­for no visible reason.  You frighten her; you raise up horrible fears and dangers in her young, nervous spirit.  She is in a condition prone to terrors and doubts, and upon this condition you came in a surly mood and imply that you yourself are changed.  What wonder she lost her head?  Yet I do not think that it was to lose her head to come to me.  She had often heard you speak of me.  She knew that I loved you well and faithfully.  She felt that if anybody could put this dreadful fear to rest, I should be the one.  Don’t say she wasn’t right.”

He listened attentively and began to feel something of his aunt’s view.

“Forgive her first for coming to me.  If mistaken, admit at least it was largely your own fault that she came.  She has nothing but love and devotion for you.  She told nothing but the truth.”

He asked a question, which seemed far from the point, but none the less indicated a coming change of attitude.  At any rate Jenny so regarded it.

“What d’you think of her?”

“I think she’s a woman of naturally fine character.  She has brains and plenty of sense and if she had not loved you unspeakably and been very emotional, I do not think this could have happened to her.”

She talked on quietly, but with the unconscious force of one who feels her subject to the heart.  The man began to yield—­not for love of Sabina, but for love of himself.  For Miss Ironsyde continued to make him see his own position must be unbearable if he persisted, while first she implied and finally declared, that only through marriage with Sabina could his own position be longer retained.

But he put forward his dismissal as an argument against marriage.

“Whatever I feel, it’s too late now,” he explained.  “Daniel heard some distorted version of the truth in Bridetown, and, of course, believed it, and came to me white with rage and sacked me.  Well, you must see that alters the case if nothing else does.  Granted, for the sake of argument, that I can overlook the foolish, clumsy way she and her mother have behaved and go on as we were going, how am I to live and keep a wife on nothing?”