“You tell me Morsfield admires the woman—­would marry her to-morrow, if he could get her.”

“He would go through the ceremony Ormont has performed, I do not doubt.”

“I don’t doubt all of you are ready.  She doesn’t encourage one?”

“On the contrary, all.”

“She’s clever.  This has been going on for now seven years, and, as far as I know, she has my brother fast.”

“She may have done the clever trick of having him fast from the beginning.”

“She’d like people to think it.”

“She has an aunt to advertise it.”

“Ormont can’t swallow the woman, I’m told.”

“Trying, if one is bound to get her down!”

“Boasts of the connection everywhere she’s admitted, Randeller says.”

“Randeller procures the admission to various parti-coloured places.”

“She must be a blinking moll-owl!  And I ask any sane Christian or Pagan—­proof enough!—­would my brother Rowsley let his wife visit those places, those people?  Monstrous to have the suspicion that he would, you know him!  Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, for example.  I say nothing to hurt the poor woman; I back her against her imbecile of a husband.  He brings a charge he can’t support; she punishes him by taking three years’ lease of independence and kicks up the grass all over the paddock, and then comes cuckoo, barking his name abroad to have her home again.  You can win the shyest filly to corn at last.  She goes, and he digests ruefully the hotch-potch of a dish the woman brings him.  Only the world spies a side-head at her, husbanded or not, though the main fault was his, and she had a right to insist that he should be sure of his charge before he smacked her in the face with it before the world.  In dealing with a woman, a man commonly prudent—­put aside chivalry, justice, and the rest—­should bind himself to disbelieve what he can’t prove.  Otherwise, let him expect his whipping, with or without ornament.  My opinion is, Lawrence Finchley had no solid foundation for his charge, except his being an imbecile.  She wasn’t one of the adventurous women to jump the bars,—­the gate had to be pushed open, and he did it.  There she is; and I ask you, would my brother Rowsley let his wife be intimate with her?  And there are others.  And, sauf votre respect, the men—­Morsfield for one, Randeller another!”

“They have a wholesome dread of the lion.”

“If they smell a chance with the lion’s bone—­it’s the sweeter for being the lion’s.  These metaphors carry us off our ground.  I must let these Ormont Memoirs run and upset him, if they get to print.  I’ve only to oppose, printed they’ll be.  The same if I say a word of this woman, he marries her to-morrow morning.  You speak of my driving men.  Why can’t I drive Ormont?  Because I’m too fond of him.  There you have the secret of the subjection of women:  they can hold their own, and a bit more, when they’ve no enemy beating inside.”