"I'm afraid so. He drinks and gambles and does everything that he shouldn't, she says."
"But if he's rich he can afford it, can't he?"
Alva turned quickly. "How can you say a thing like that? As if money can condone sin. Don't you know that a thoroughly bad man is a soulless thing, and that to marry a man like that is either heroic or deeply degrading, just according to whether one does it for love or for money."
"But you said that she loved him."
"Yes; but you said he could afford to be wicked!"
Lassie clasped her hands meditatively. "To think of that girl having a millionaire watching outside her window, nights! And Mrs. O'Neil says she hasn't even a nightgown with her, so she can't possibly get up in the cold to peep out through the blinds."
"I suppose she couldn't do that, anyway," said Alva; "you see her mother doesn't know he's there, so she couldn't get up to look."
"How does she know herself that he is there, then? perhaps he tells her he watches and really stays in bed at some hotel."
"Lassie!"
"What's the use of his watching, anyway? Does it do any good? I should think that she'd be afraid that he'd take cold. I—"