"The finest woman in the world, Sir."
"Just so! But your man would doom her to renunciation—a solitary life of sorrow and regret. And so the only result of his praiseworthy principles, his sense of duty, as you say, and all the rest of it, is that he will have ruined three lives—the life of the woman he marries and does not love, the life of the woman he loves and does not marry, and his own life also."
"Then you think, Sir .... you think he should stop even yet?"
"Even at the church door, at the altar-steps—if there's no harm done, and he is sure she is the wrong woman."
Stowell felt as if the vapours which had clouded his brain so long had been swept away as by a mountain breeze, but he thought it necessary to keep up the disguise.
"I feel you must be right, sir," rising to go. "At all events I cannot argue against you. But I think you'll agree that .... that if my man can wipe out this bad passage in his life without injury to anybody and without scandal .... I think you will agree that his first duty is to tell the woman he loves...."
"Eh? What the deuce .... Good heavens, no!"
"But surely he couldn't ask a pure-minded girl...."
"To take the other woman's leavings? Certainly he couldn't if she knew anything about it. But why should she? Why should a pure-minded girl, as you say, be told about something that happened before she came on to the scene?"
Stowell's scruples were overcome. He had argued against himself, but he knew well that he had wished to be beaten. He was going off when the Governor, following him to the door, laid a hand on his shoulder and said,