“That is unworthy of you,” says his cousin.  She rises.  “I have only a few moments—­and your wife is coming with me, and I would say one word to you before I go.  She is young—­very young.  She is a mere child.”

“She is old enough, I presume, to know right from wrong.”

“She is the youngest creature I know,” persists Margaret, in her sweet angelic way, that is all charity, all kindness and all forbearance.  “And what a little fairy of a thing!  A man should have patience with her. Have patience, Maurice.”

“Oh!  All you women support each other,” says he, frowning.  “You wish me to believe that because Nature has built her in a smaller mould than other women, I should therefore condone her faults.”

“Such pretty faults,” says Margaret.  “A little hot temper, a little sauciness, a little petulance—­what more?”

Rylton’s lip curls.

“If you are such a devotee at her shrine as all that comes to, there is nothing more to be said.  Her flirtation with her cousin——­”

"Was it a flirtation?”

“There are new names for things every day.  Give it the new name and be done with it.”

“There can be no new name for a mere imagination.  I don’t believe she ever had any—­any love affair with Mr. Hescott.  I don’t really, and,” boldly, “in your heart I don’t think you believe it either.  No, don’t turn away, don’t. It is for your sake I speak, because I have always your interest at heart; Maurice, I entreat you to pause, to think.  Is all the fault on Tita’s side?  Have you loved her as she should be loved?—­that little, quick, enthusiastic creature.  Where has your heart been since your marriage!”

“You go very far,” says Rylton, pale, cold.

“I know; I know.  And I am only a cousin, a mere nobody.  But I love the child, and I must speak.  You will hate me for it, perhaps, but why has Marian been here?”

“Tita asked her.”

“Is that the whole truth?”

“No; the half,” says Sir Maurice.  He rouses himself from the lethargy into which he has fallen, and looks at Margaret.  “I promised Marian an invitation here; I asked Tita for that invitation later.  Marian came.  I believed there would be harm in her coming, and I steeled myself against it.  I tell you, Margaret—­I tell you, and you only—­that when she came the harm—­was—­well”—­straightening himself—­“there was no harm.  All at once I found I did not care.  My love for her seemed dead.  It was terrible, but it was the fact; I seemed to care for nothing—­nothing at all.  Margaret, believe me, it was all dead.  I tell you this, that the night when I discovered that, I longed for death as a solution of my misery.  To care for nothing—­nothing!”

“There was something,” says Margaret.  “There was Tita!”

“Was there?”

“Certainly there was.”

“She has proved it,” says Rylton, breaking into a sort of heart-broken mirth.