All of those things it was easy to get from Mrs. Franklin. Amy, not willing to reveal what there had been between her and Deane, and having that instinct for drawing sympathy to herself by seeming self-depreciation, spoke gently of how she feared she did not altogether understand about Deane's friend Ruth Holland. Was she wrong in not going with Deane to see her? Mrs. Franklin's explosion of indignation at the idea, and the feeling with which, during the hour that followed, she expressed herself about Deane's friend Ruth Holland, acted in a double fashion as both fortification and new hurt. Mrs. Franklin, leader in church and philanthropic affairs, had absolutely no understanding of things which went outside the domain of what things should be. The poor and the wicked did terrible things that society must do something about. There was no excuse whatever for people who ought to know better. That people should be dominated by things they ought not to feel was perversity on their part and the most wilful kind of wickedness. She had Mrs. Lawrence's point of view, but from a more provincial angle. Deane did not get his questioning spirit, what she called his stubbornness, from his mother. Added to what she as a church woman and worker for social betterment felt about the affair was the resentment of the mother at her son's having been, as she put it, dragged into the outrage. She grew so inflamed in talking of how this woman had used Deane that she did not take thought of how she was giving more of an impression of her power over him than might be pleasant hearing for Deane's young wife. The indignation of the whole Franklin family at what they called the way Deane had been made a cat's paw was fanned to full flame in this preposterous suggestion that Amy should go to see Ruth Holland. In her indignation at the idea she gave a new sense of what the town felt about Ruth, and she was more vehement than tactful in her expressions against Deane for holding out that way against the whole town. "It just shows, my dear," she said, "what a woman of no principle can do with a man!" Amy, hurt to the quick in this thought of the mysterious lure of a woman of no principle, remarked casually, "She's wonderfully attractive, I presume." Mrs. Franklin was not too blunted by indignation to miss the pain that was evident in the indifferently asked question. Hastily--more hastily than subtly, she proceeded to depreciate the attractions of Ruth Holland, but in the depreciation left an impression of some quality--elusive, potent--which more than beauty or definite charm gave her power. Edith too had spoken of that "something" about Ruth; a something one never forgot; a something, she said, that no one else had.