"I must acknowledge," continued Belden, as he moved towards the door, "that her father has acted with a good deal of reasonableness and forbearance. You can imagine Leppin's anxiety, without any word from me. You can feel how keenly he looks forward to having justice done—to having complete reparation made. You know what that means as well as I do."
And he passed out, leaving his senior to ponder the matter alone.
Belden was the first person with whom Marshall had permitted himself a full canvass of the situation, the sole husbandman towards whom he had turned for assistance in garnering the first-fruits of Truesdale's career abroad. Never before had evil grazed against him and his; he had regarded it, in fact, as something appertaining principally to ill-regulated persons in a lower walk of life. He had heard of such subjects as being handled in fiction, and he had noticed them touched upon in the theatrical reviews of the newspapers. But nothing of the sinful, the vicious, the malodorous had ever, within his recollection, come to his family, to his friends, or even to any of his business associates. Yet here it had come at last, and it must be confronted.
He had quite shrank from the ordeal of considering the matter with so nimble and experienced a person as Truesdale himself, and he was almost too Anglo-Saxon in his pure-mindedness to attempt an over-intimate discussion of it with his own wife; it took a large share of his fortitude to broach the matter even to his elder son.
"I can't talk to Truesdale about it," said this virginal old man, as he sat in Roger's office; "you've got to do it. I can't."
"Well, really, father," began Roger. He had almost the air of resenting an imputation.
"I don't mean that, Roger," said his father, in some distress. "I have every confidence in you; I believe you're all right. But—"
"Has anybody seen the girl?"
"Your mother says that—well, she says that Jane has seen her"—he brought in his daughter's name with a great distress—"and your aunt Lydia. She told your mother she was sure this girl was one to lend herself to—to—"
"H'm," said Roger, in a non-committal way. He always subjected his aunt
Lydia's opinions and impressions to a double discount.