"Lady John is the woman," she a third time declared.
It naturally left me gaping. "Then there is one?" I cried between bewilderment and joy.
"A woman? There's her!" Mrs. Briss replied with more force than grammar. "I know," she briskly, almost breezily added, "that I said she wouldn't do (as I had originally said she would do better than any one), when you a while ago mentioned her. But that was to save her."
"And you don't care now," I smiled, "if she's lost!"
She hesitated. "She is lost. But she can take care of herself."
I could but helplessly think of her. "I'm afraid indeed that, with what you've done with her, I can't take care of her. But why is she now to the purpose," I articulately wondered, "any more than she was?"
"Why? On the very system you yourself laid down. When we took him for brilliant, she couldn't be. But now that we see him as he is——"
"We can only see her also as she is?" Well, I tried, as far as my amusement would permit, so to see her; but still there were difficulties. "Possibly!" I at most conceded. "Do you owe your discovery, however, wholly to my system? My system, where so much made for protection," I explained, "wasn't intended to have the effect of exposure."
"It appears to have been at all events intended," my companion returned, "to have the effect of driving me to the wall; and the consequence of that effect is nobody's fault but your own."
She was all logic now, and I could easily see, between my light and my darkness, how she would remain so. Yet I was scarce satisfied. "And it's only on 'that effect'——?"