“Yes. I am sure you are. You made a companion of the girl––I may say a friend.”
“No, sir, not a friend. She was not my equal in any respect.”
“Say a companion then. You taught her how to dress, how to converse, how to carry herself above her own class. You permitted her to wander about the garden with your brother.”
“I always watched them.”
“You let her talk to him––you let her sing with him.”
“Never but when I was present. From the first I told her what Roland was––told her to mind nothing at all he said.”
“If you had put a glass of cold water before a man dying of thirst, would you have been justified in telling him not to drink? You might even have added that the water contained poison; all the same, he would have drunk it, and your blame it would be for putting it within his reach.”
“Indeed, Mr. Farrar, I will not take the blame of the creature’s wickedness. It is a strange thing to be told that educating a girl and trying to lift her a step or two higher is a sin.”
“It is a sin, madam, unless you persevere in it. God does not permit the rich, for their own temporary glory or convenience, to make experiments with an immortal soul, and then abandon it like a soiled glove or a game of which they have grown weary. What you began you ought in common justice to have carried on to such perfection as was possible. No circumstances could justify you in beguiling a girl from her natural protectors and then leaving her in the midst of danger alone.”