"You'd never have felt the loss."
"I'm not the first man driven to the dogs by a woman's falseness, and I shan't be the last. They're all alike—cold, and hard, and unforgiving, making no allowance for a man's temptations, which they can't understand. Heaven defend us all from good women, de Konski."
"The good woman to whom I suppose you allude, your cousin, has been a great blessing to me."
"Oh, has she? And how?"
"In many ways. Partly by the stimulus of a brave and beautiful nature, purified by suffering, and unselfish to the core. In a more material sense, as a most capable and useful and discreet secretary."
"Secretary? Private secretary? To you—to a man?"
"Certainly. The calling is recognized and honourable. There are many more arduous and less pleasant ways of earning a competence—for women. Still, I shall be glad for her sake when the day comes, as it surely will, for me to lose my valuable secretary by a suitable marriage, though I can't help being a little grateful to you for making it necessary for her to work."
"I? When I've been ready to marry her, and would have asked her any time this two years, but for her everlasting snubbing and coldness?"
"Oh, I thought you said she was false."
"When I implored her not to leave my mother——"