“She will forgive him—if she loved him.”
“She may, I have known women to go on loving and trusting a man found out in fraud—only a woman could do that.”
“A man——”
“No!”
“Oh, Domine, for father’s sake—you loved father—for his sake, be kind to poor, dispairing Neil.”
“Yes, child, ‘despairing’—that is, because he knows he is wrong, and is not sorry for his fault. A good man in the presence of any misfortune stands up, feels exalted, and stretches out his arms to the Great Friendship—he never drifts like a dismasted ship.”
Here Neil entered the room again, looking very respectable in the new tweed suit which the Domine had brought him. “Does it fit you, Neil?” he asked.
“As if made for me, Sir. I thank you for it.”
“It was altered for you. Finlay knew your measure to a quarter of an inch, he said. I told him you were not fit to come.”