So, as Mrs. Mancredo did not explain to him her affairs, he only knew of them what had been reported at the hotel; namely, that she was an adopted sister of Reginald Grove. He knew that one of the women under the roof claimed to dislike Grove as a disagreeable sick man, and another had declared that she hated him as a furious fool. But as to Miss Daksha’s sentiment toward the man whom she was said to be saving, he could discover nothing. And therefore that matter uncomfortably occupied his mind. For, in his conjectures concerning Ethelbert, he had nothing to go upon but a more or less murky form of concluding that the acts of _all_ women were based upon some emotional, self-seeking foundation. He was not to say “a nice man,” this Judge Elkhorn. But of curiosity, persistence and “prod,” he had no lack. He had some things in stocks, some things in banks, and some things in mortgages on farms out West; but his poverty was extreme and corrosive. One form of it that was eating his vitals this day, made him peer sharply through his glasses and thrust his head forward in a way which caused his Adam’s apple to choke up against his collar; and that resulted in making him pitch his very hoarse voice up very high in the effort to get it, if possible, a bit higher than that collar, and so on a level with his greatly heightened curiosity. For this curiosity took form in the desire to know what conditions could have existed which made both Mrs. Mancredo and Bertha Gemacht look at Reginald as they had looked at him in the judge’s presence. For in the look of both was repulsion, dread, and distinctly a look of enslavement to him, to which was added a portrayed sense of angry restiveness under that enslavement. What is more, he had twice noticed how invariably they turned away from the sick man, and gazed appealingly (it could be called nothing else) into the eyes of Ethel. And he had seen that her superordinary manner steadied them, and correlated them with strength. For strengthened they were, as all are strengthened who are released from fear, and allied to that power which comes as direct from All-that-is as water comes into a basin from a reservoir to which its conductors are attached.