“Well, to relieve your feelings, we will take it that you are a nebulous half-and-half and somewhat unsatisfactory sort of person who blindly follows a bundle of instincts she knows less than nothing about, just like a dog or a cat or a rabbit. And is not that what this elaborate moral code of ours throws back to if we take the trouble to examine it? And is not one entitled to say that a dog is a good dog, a cat a good cat, a rabbit a good rabbit, just as faithfully as it follows the instincts under its fur, whatever they happen to be? I have taken this excursus, Mrs. Brown, and have ventured to theorize a little, quite unprofitably, I grant, and at the risk of causing you some ill-founded alarm, because to-morrow I have to exercise all the talents with which the good God has endowed me in the cause of an extremely wicked woman who has committed a murder. Her crime is of a vulgar and calculating kind, perpetrated in cold blood; there is not a rag of evidence to save her from the gallows; but Providence has called upon me to attempt to save her from the fate she so richly merits. And there is an instinct within me, her advocate, for which I am at a loss to account by the rules of reason and logic, which calls on its possessor to save this abandoned creature at all hazard. If I obey that instinct I shall be a good advocate and a bad citizen; if I disobey it I shall be a good citizen but a bad advocate. Yet if I obey it I shall have fulfilled to the best of my ability the legal contract into which I have entered, and in so doing I shall be called on to commit a serious misdemeanor against human nature. On the other hand, if I disobey it I shall be causing human nature to be vindicated in a becoming manner, yet shall be guilty of an equally serious misdemeanor against myself; and further, I shall be false to the interests of my unfortunate client whose money I have taken, and render myself indictable for the offence of entering into a contract which I have wilfully refrained from carrying out. Please have another cup of tea, and kindly pass the marmalade.” Northcote having shifted the ground of his reasoning from the personal to the abstract, the old woman regained sufficient confidence to pour out the tea without spilling it. “Now,” said Northcote, “if you were in my position, would you try to enable one whom you knew to be a murderess to escape the gallows?” “If I might say so, sir, I would try to have nothing to do with her at all.” “In other words, you would rather starve than take her money?” “Yes, sir, I think I would.” “And cause _you_ to rob your poor little grandchildren?” “I--I--don’t say that, sir.” “Let us be as logical as we can. Again, would it not cause me to rob my poor old mother who has contributed her all towards my education, which I put to no useful end?” “You would be honest, sir.” “Honest, do you say! Do you call it honest to pervert and misapply the money my mother has lavished on my education?”