"It was the only inheritance I wasn't able to squander in my wild oats days," he returned. "May you cherish it, my boy, as carefully as your father has done. It would be a dull world without the women."
"And a peaceable one," added Nicholas viciously.
"We owe them much," said the judge, pouring maple syrup from the old silver jug. "If Helen of Troy set the world at war, she made men heroes."
"You can't get the pater to acknowledge that the fair things are ever wrong," put in Tom protestingly. "He would have proved Eve's innocence to the Almighty. If a woman murdered ten men before his eyes he'd lay the charge on the devil and acquit her."
The judge shook his head with a laugh.
"I might merely argue that the queen can do no wrong," he suggested.
When Tom had finished his breakfast, Nicholas walked with him to his office, and, seeing Bessie Pollard, red-eyed and drooping in her father's door, he lingered an instant and held out his hand. There was defiant sympathy in his act—disdain of the judgment of Kingsborough—and of General Battle, who was passing—and pity for a bruised common thing that looked at him with beautiful, mindless eyes.
"You aren't looking bright to-day," he said kindly, "but things will pull through, never fear—they always do, if you give them time."
Then he responded coolly to the general's cool nod, and, rejoining Tom, they went on arm in arm. In his large-minded manhood it had not occurred to him to connect the girl with the wrong done upon him—he knew her to be more weak than wicked, and, in her soft, pretty sadness, she reminded him of a half-drowned kitten.
During the next few months he frequently passed Eugenia in the road. Sometimes he did not look at her, and again he met her wistful gaze and spoke without a smile. Once he checked an eager movement towards her because he had met Bernard just ahead—and he hated him; once he had seen the carriage in the distance and had waited in a passionate rush of remorse and love to hear her laughter as she talked with Dudley Webb. They had faced each other at last with resolute eyes and unswerving wills. On his side was the pride of an innocent man accused, the bitterness of a proud man on an inferior plane; on hers, the recollection of that wild evening in the road, and the belated recognition of the debt she owed her race.