"Have you seen this lady, Edward?" asked the Rector.
"Oh, seen her! No," replied the Squire. "Why should I want to see her? She may be good-looking. They say she is. I suppose Dick wouldn't have fallen in love with her if she were not, and at any rate women who are not good-looking don't become pets of the stage, as I'm told this woman was. Pah! It's beyond everything I could have believed of Dick. I would rather he had married the daughter of a farm-labourer—a girl of clean healthy English stock. To bring a creature from behind the footlights and make her mistress of Kencote—a soiled woman—that's what she is, even if she has never sold herself—and who knows that she hasn't? She did sell herself—to a broken-down roué, a man old enough to be her father—for his wretched title, I suppose. And now she wants to buy Kencote, and my son, Dick, the straightest, finest fellow a father ever had reason to be proud of. I tell you, Tom, the world ought to be delivered of these harpies. They ought to be locked up, Tom, locked up, and the wickedness whipped out of them."
"Has Dick said that he wanted to marry her?" asked the Rector, anxious to bring this tirade, which was gathering in intensity, to an end.
"It's as plain as it can be. He has brought her down here, and he wants us to take her up."
"Well, but is that all, Edward? Surely you have more to go on than that, if you have made up your mind that he wants to marry her."
"I have more to go on. He told me only two nights ago that he was quite ready to marry, and that he wouldn't marry a girl. That's plain English, isn't it? And this comes just on top of it. Why, he had her down here—fixed it all up for her—and never said a word to us till after we'd heard from outside that she was there. There are a lot of things. I can put two and two together as well as anybody, and I haven't a doubt of it. And I asked him definitely, yesterday, and he didn't deny it."
"He didn't acknowledge it, I suppose."
"I tell you he didn't deny it. He gave me an evasive answer. That isn't like Dick. She has had a bad influence on him already. Don't waste time in trying to persuade me that black is white, Tom. Tell me how I am to stop this."
The Rector could not tell him how to stop it. He knew very well that Dick was a stronger man than his father, and that if he had made up his mind to do a thing he would do it. But he still doubted whether he had made up his mind to do this particular thing. He thought that the Squire was probably alarming himself needlessly, and with all the art that lay in his power he tried to persuade him that it was so. "Young men," he ended, "do make friends with women they wouldn't want to marry. You know that is so, Edward. It is no use shutting your eyes to facts."
"Yes, but they don't bring them down to their homes for their mothers and sisters to make friends with," retorted the Squire. "It's the last thing Dick would do, and I'd rather he did what he's doing now, bad as it is, than do a thing like that. He's hypnotised—that's what it is—he thinks she's a good woman—everything she ought to be——"