“Father—I never asked you to defend the case. I begged you not to—all this horror we have been through is due to your defence.”
“If you’d behaved properly there would have been no case at all, and if you had behaved with only ordinary discretion the defence could have been proved. When I decided that we must, for the honour of the family, defend the case, I had no idea what an utter fool you had been. Your cross-examination was a revelation to me as well as to the court. You’ve simply played Old Harry with your reputation, and now the only decent thing for you to do is to marry this man and get out.”
“I can get out without marrying this man.”
“And where will you go?”
“I shall go abroad. I have enough money of my own to live on quietly, and I needn’t be a disgrace to anyone. If I marry Charles I shall only bring unhappiness to both of us.”
“Oh, Mary, do be reasonable!” cried Lady Alard—“do think of the girls”—with a wave that included both twenty-two and thirty-eight—“and do think how all this is your own fault. When you first left Julian, you should have come here and lived at home, then no one would ever have imagined anything. But you would go off and live by yourself, and think you could do just the same as if you weren’t married—though I’m sure I’d be sorry to see Jenny going about with anyone as you went about with Charles Smith. When I was engaged to your father, we were hardly ever so much as left alone in a room together——”
“Your reminiscences are interesting, my dear,” said Sir John, “but cast no light on the situation. The point is that Mary refuses to pay the price of her folly, even though by doing so she could buy out her family as well as herself.”
“I fail to see how.”
“Then you must be blind.”
“It seems to me it would be much better if I went right away. I’ve made a hideous mess of my life, and brought trouble upon you all—I acknowledge that; but at least there’s one thing I will not do—and that is walk with my eyes open into the trap I walked into ten years ago with my eyes shut.”