She struck her hip with her clenched hand. “I see it,” she said, “you thought Dudley Leicester had seized the chance of his wife’s mother being ill to monkey about with me. You thought he’d been doing it before. You thought he was going to go on doing it. You thought he’d managed to conceal it from you. You thought he was a deep, dark ne’er-do-well like yourself or any other man. But I tell you this: Dudley Leicester’s a man in a thousand. I’m the only person that’s to blame. I tell you Dudley Leicester hasn’t spoken a word to me since the day we parted. I tell you I got him just that one night to show myself what I could do. He couldn’t help being with me; he had to see me home. We were all at the Esmeralda together, and all the rest of us were married, or engaged or coupled up somehow. He _had_ to see me home as we lived next door. He did it with the worst grace in the world. He tried to get out of it. It was because he behaved so like an oaf that I set myself to get him. I swear that it is true. I swear as I am a religious woman. I believe in God and things.” Again Robert Grimshaw said, “Good God” and his agitation grew on him. “Well,” Etta Stackpole said, “what is there to get so upset about? It doesn’t count in Dudley for dissoluteness. There isn’t a man in the world, not even yourself, Robert Grimshaw, could get out of my having him if I set myself to it at that time of night and after that sort of evening. I’m not boasting about it. It’s the nature of the beast that you men are. I set myself to do it because I knew it would mortify him; because it would make him feel he was a dirty sort of dog next morning. What are you in such a stew about?” she said. “It wasn’t anything to do with Dudley’s real nature. I tell you he’s as pure-minded as a sucking-lamb.” Robert Grimshaw was walking nervously up and down, striking the side of his trousers with his ebony stick.