"My dear," I said sadly, "you do not understand." I remembered how often I had heard--and sometimes noticed--that women's ideas of honour differ from men's.
"Understand!" she retorted, turning upon me, fiery hot. "I understand that you think Jim has done this mean, miserable, wretched thing. Father," she continued, with sudden gravity, and she laid both her hands on my shoulders, so that her brave eyes looked into my eyes, "if three people came to you and told you that I had gone into your bedroom and taken money from the cash-box in your cupboard to pay a bill of mine, and that when I had done it I had kept it from you, and told stories about it--if three, four, five people told you that they had seen me do it, would you believe them?"
"No, Kitty," I said, smiling against my will, "not though five angels told me so, my dear. I know you too well."
"And, sir, though five angels told me this, I would not believe it! Do you think I do not know him--and love him?"
And the foolish girl, who had begun to waltz round the room like a mad thing, stopped and looked at me with tears in her eyes and her lips quivering.
I could not but take some comfort from her confidence.
"True," I said. "The Colonel brought him up, and it seems hardly possible that the lad should turn out so bad. But the photograph, my girl--the photograph? What do you say to that? It was Jim, I swear. I could not be mistaken. There could not be another so like him."
"There is no one like him," she said softly.
"Very well. And then I have noticed that he has been in bad spirits lately. I'm afraid--I'm afraid a bad conscience, my dear."
"You dear old donkey!" she answered, shaking me with both her hands. "That was about me. He has told me all that. He thought Mr. Farquhar--Mr. Farquhar, indeed!"