"Well, if you lived near here, you could be put on the bench. There's a lot of useful work that a man living on the income you have can do in keeping things going. In these times the more gentry there are living in a place, the better it is for the country all round. What do you do as it is? It can't be satisfactory to anybody to live year after year in a whirl. There's not a single thing you do in London that's good for you that you couldn't do better in the country."
"I don't know about that. There's music for one thing, and pictures and plays. I'm not altogether the brainless voluptuary, you know. There's a lot goes on in London that keeps your mind alive, and you drop that if you bury yourself in the country."
"Stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed the Squire, but with persistent good humour. "Don't I keep my mind alive? You'd have the 'Times' and the 'Spectator'; and there are lots of clever people in the country. Look at Tom! He hardly ever goes near London. Hates the place. But I'll guarantee that he reads as much as any Bishop, and knows what's going on in the world as well as anybody. No, my dear boy, it won't do. I don't say there aren't people it suits to be in London. Herbert Birkett, for instance!" (This was Mrs. Clinton's brother, the Judge.) "But he's been brought up to it. He hasn't got the tastes of a country gentleman, wouldn't be happy away from the Athenæum Club, and all that sort of thing. And George Senhouse, with his Parliament and his committees and so on. That's a different thing. They've got their work to do. But don't tell me you are like that. Yours is a different life altogether. They spend theirs amongst sober, God-fearing people—at least George Senhouse does. Of course, Herbert Birkett was a Radical, and I shouldn't like to answer for the morals of all his friends, even now. But, anyhow, they're not the sort that would make a bosom friend of a woman like that Mrs. Amberley."
"Well, I don't know that I should make a bosom friend of her myself. But she's no worse than a lot of others. She's been found out—that's all—and, of course, the whole pack are in full cry after her now."
"My dear boy, you are surely not going to stand up for a woman convicted of a vulgar theft!"
"She hasn't been convicted yet. But even if she is guilty, as I suppose she is, one can't help feeling a bit sorry for her. You don't know what may have driven her to it. Amberley left her badly off, and it's a desperate thing for a woman to be worried night and day by debt. That's what Susan feels. She's known it in a sort of way herself. You know the dust-up we had a couple of years ago, when you kindly came to the rescue. Well, I suppose that brings it home to her. She doesn't care for Rachel Amberley any more than I do, but she can't take the line about this business that most people take; and I'm inclined to think she's right. After all—you were talking about religion just now—it seems to me that religion ought to prevent you judging harshly of people who have got into trouble."
The Squire's upper lip went down. "Flagrant dishonesty is not a thing that you can judge leniently, and no religion in the world would tell you to do so," he said. "You've got to keep to certain lines, or everything goes by the board. I don't like to hear you upholding such views."
"It is all a question of how you are situated. It would be impossible to think of you, for instance, stealing anything. You wouldn't have the smallest temptation to. But you might do something else that would be just as bad."
"I might do something just as bad—something dishonourable!"
"You never know. You might have a sudden temptation. Of course, it wouldn't come in any way you expected! You might act on the spur of the moment."