"Conventionality," he exclaimed; "I'd sooner have the honest vice of the man who pleads guilty; I'd a thousand times sooner defend his case, than urge for a woman who just holds on to the virtue of conventionality with the tips of her fingers."
"You gave that lady a bad time the other day, Mr. Traill," said Miss Standish-Roe, admiringly.
"I did? Which one?"
"The lady who admitted to kissing the co-respondent."
"Why, you weren't in the court, were you?"
"No—but I read it in the paper—your sister told me about it."
Mrs. Durlacher looked apprehensively to her brother's eyes. From so small a thing as that he might unearth suspicion. But a pardonable vanity was touched in him. He turned no ground to find the intentions that lay beneath.
"Well, there was a case," he said. "I've no doubt the woman was innocent of the worst; but that was an exact case of the virtue of conventionality. She'd just hung on to it, scraping her nails. She deserved all she got."
"And you persisted in trying to prove her guilty?" said Miss Standish-Roe, in amazement. "When you thought her innocent?"
"Why not?" he retorted. "Society wants to be purged of that sort of woman, and it's full of 'em."