"You should pull yourself together, mon cher Bracondale," she said; "it is not like you to be limp and undecided. You had better stay for the party, and make yourself behave like a gentleman, and how you mean to continue. We have passed the days when 'Oh no, we never mention him' is the order, and 'never meeting,' and that sort of thing. You are bound to meet unless you go into the wilds. And you must face it and try to forget her."
"I can never forget her," he said, in a deep voice; "but, as you say, I must face it and do my best."
"You see," continued the widow, "the girl has only been married a year, and her husband is the most unattractive human being you could find along a sidewalk of miles; but he is her husband, anyway, and she may have children."
Hector clinched his hands in a convulsive movement of anguish and rage.
"And you must realize all these possibilities, and settle a path for yourself and stick to it."
"Oh, I couldn't bear that!" he said. "It would be better I should take her away myself now, to-day."
"You will do no such thing!" said the widow, sternly, and she sat up again. "You forget I am going to marry her father, and I shall look upon her as my daughter and protect her from wolves—do you hear? And what is more, she is too good and true to go with you. She has a backbone if you haven't; and she'll see it her duty to stick to that lump of middle-class meat she is bound to—and she'll do her best, if she suffers to heart-break. It is she, the poor, little white dove, that you and I have wounded between us, that I pity, not you—great, strong man!"
"Oh, you are all the same, you Englishmen. Beasts to kill and women to subjugate—the only aims in life!"
"Don't!" said Hector. "I am not the animal you think me. I worship Theodora, and I would devote my life and its best aims to secure her happiness and do her honor; but don't you see you have drawn a picture that would drive any man mad—"