Unfortunately the result is to an action as the lens through which it is viewed, and the turpitude of the deed seems to increase or diminish according to the effect it produces.

Had it been in Algernon Dusautoy’s nature to receive the joke good-humouredly, it might have been regarded as an audacious exercise of wit, and have been quickly forgotten, but when it had actually made a breach between him and his wife’s family, and driven him from Bayford when everything conspired to make his departure unfeelingly cruel, the caricature was regarded as a serious insult and an abuse of intimacy.  Even Mr. Kendal was not superior to this view, feeling the offence with all the sensitiveness of a hot-tempered man, a proud reserved guardian of the sanctities of home, and of a father who had seen his daughter’s weakest and most faulty action turned into ridicule, and he seemed to feel himself bound to atone for not going to all the lengths to which Algernon would have impelled him, by showing the utmost displeasure within the bounds of common sense.

Albinia, better appreciating the irresistibly ludicrous aspect of the adventure, argued that the sketch harmlessly shut up in a paper-case showed no great amount of insolence, and that considering how the discovery had been made, it ought not to be visited.  She thought the drawing had better be restored without remarks by the same hand that had abstracted it; but Mr. Kendal sternly declared this was impossible, and Sophy’s countenance seconded him.

‘Well, then,’ said Albinia, ’put it into my hands.  I’m a bad manager in general, but I can promise that Ulick will come down so shocked and concerned, that you will not have the heart not to forgive him.’

‘The question is not of forgiveness,’ said Sophy, in the most rigid of voices, as she saw yielding in her father’s face; if any one had to forgive, it was poor Lucy and Algernon.  All we have to do, is to be on our guard for the future.’

‘Sophy is right,’ said Mr. Kendal; ’intimacy must be over with one who has so little discretion or good taste.’

’Then after his saving Maurice, he is to be given up, because he quizzed the Polysyllable?’ cried Albinia.

‘I do not give him up,’ said Mr. Kendal.  ’I highly esteem his good qualities, and should be happy to do him a service, but I cannot have my family at the mercy of his wit, nor my child taught disrespect.  We have been unwisely familiar, and must retreat.’

‘And what do you mean us to do?’ exclaimed Albinia.  ’Are we to cut him systematically?’

‘I do not know what course you may adopt,’ said Mr. Kendal, in a tone whose grave precision rebuked her half petulant, half facetious inquiry.  ’I have told you that I do not mean to do anything extravagant, nor to discontinue ordinary civilities, but I think you will find that our former habits are not resumed.’

‘And Maurice must not be always with him,’ said Sophy.