'I didn't write at all. I put it in the fire.'
Glentorly glanced at his friend as she made this decisive reply. Her handsome, rather massive features were set in a calm repose; no scruples or doubts as to the rectitude of her action assailed her. Trix had chosen to jump over the pale; outside the pale she must abide. But that night, when a lady at dinner argued that she ought to have a vote, he exclaimed with an unmistakable shudder, 'By Jove, you'd be wanting to be judges next!' What turned his thoughts to that direful possibility?
But of course he did not let Mrs. Bonfill perceive any dissent from her judgment or her sentence. He contented himself with saying, 'Well, she's made a pretty mess of it!'
'There's nothing left for her—absolutely nothing,' Mrs. Bonfill concluded. Her tone would have excused, if not justified, Trix's making an end of herself in the river.
Lady Glentorly was equally emphatic on another aspect of the case.
'It's a lesson to all of us,' she told her husband. 'I don't acquit myself, much less can I acquit Sarah Bonfill. This taking up of people merely because they're good-looking and agreeable has gone far enough. You men are mainly responsible for it.'
'My dear!' murmured Glentorly weakly.
'It's well enough to send them a card now and then, but anything more than that—we must put our foot down. The Barmouths of all people! I declare it serves them right!'
'The affair seems to have resulted in serving everybody right,' he reflected. 'So I suppose it's all for the best.'
'Marriage is the point on which we must make a stand. After a short pause she added an inevitable qualification: 'Unless there are overwhelming reasons the other way. And this woman was never even supposed to be more than decently off.'