Jack scowled his blackest. "It would be a pitiful scoundrel that did. Her misfortunes ought to make her sacred to every one that has the soul of a man."
"Well, so it does. That is just what I was saying. The trouble is that they don't make her sacred to every one that has the soul of a woman," Mrs. Wilmington teased.
"I know it doesn't," Jack returned, in helpless scorn, as he left Mrs. Munger alone to his aunt.
"Do you suppose he still cares anything for her?" Mrs. Munger asked, with cosey confidentiality.
"Who knows?" Mrs. Wilmington rejoined, indolently. "It would be very poetical, wouldn't it, if he were to seize the opportunity to go back to her?"
"Beautiful!" sighed Mrs. Munger. "I do like a manly man!"
She drove home through the village slowly, hoping for a chance of a further interchange of conjectures and impressions; but she saw no one she had not already talked with till she met Dr. Morrell, driving out of the avenue from his house. She promptly set her phaeton across the road so that he could not get by, if he were rude enough to wish it.
"Doctor," she called out, "what do you think of this extraordinary letter of Mr. Northwick's?"
Dr. Morrell's boyish eyes twinkled. "You mean that letter in the Events? Do you think Northwick wrote it?"
"Why, don't you, doctor?" she questioned back, with a note of personal grievance in her voice.