“Of course we’ve been friends,” said Cradell, who rather liked this view of the matter.

“Yes,—­you have been friends!  She’s diddled you out of your money, and that’s the beginning and the end of it.  And now, if you go on showing off your friendship, you’ll be done out of more money.  You’re making an ass of yourself.  That’s the long and the short of it.”

“And what have you made of yourself with that girl?  There are worse asses than I am yet, Master Johnny.”  Eames, as he had no answer ready to this counter attack, left the room and went downstairs.  Cradell soon followed him, and in a few minutes they were all eating their dinner together at Mrs Roper’s hospitable table.

Immediately after dinner Lupex took himself away, and the conversation upstairs became general on the subject of the lady’s departure.

“If I was him I’d never ask a question about her, but let her go,” said Amelia.

“Yes; and then have all her bills following you, wherever you went,” said Amelia’s brother.

“I’d sooner have her bills than herself,” said Eames.

“My belief is, that she’s been an ill-used woman,” said Cradell.  “If she had a husband that she could respect and have loved, and all that sort of thing, she would have been a charming woman.”

“She’s every bit as bad as he is,” said Mrs Roper.

“I can’t agree with you, Mrs Roper,” continued the lady’s champion.  “Perhaps I ought to understand her position better than any one here, and—­”

“Then that’s just what you ought not to do, Mr Cradell,” said Mrs Roper.  And now the lady of the house spoke out her mind with much maternal dignity and with some feminine severity.  “That’s just what a young man like you has no business to know.  What’s a married woman like that to you, or you to her; or what have you to do with understanding her position?  When you’ve a wife of your own, if ever you do have one, you’ll find you’ll have trouble enough then without anybody else interfering with you.  Not but what I believe you’re innocent as a lamb about Mrs Lupex; that is, as far as any harm goes.  But you’ve got yourself into all this trouble by meddling, and was like enough to get yourself choked upstairs by that man.  And who’s to wonder when you go on pretending to be in love with a woman in that way, and she old enough to be your mother?  What would your mamma say if she saw you at it?”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Cradell.

“It’s all very well your laughing, but I hate such folly.  If I see a young man in love with a young woman, I respect him for it;” and then she looked at Johnny Eames.  “I respect him for it,—­even though he may now and then do things as he shouldn’t.  They most of ’em does that.  But to see a young man like you, Mr Cradell, dangling after an old married woman, who doesn’t know how to behave herself; and all just because she lets him to do it;—­ugh!—­an old broomstick with a petticoat on would do just as well!  It makes me sick to see it, and that’s the truth of it.  I don’t call it manly; and it ain’t manly, is it, Miss Spruce?”