"My heart is as soft as yours, John. I say, let things alone. We are going to Atheling soon--we cannot go too soon now. If it must be told her, Kate will hear it, and bear it best in her own home; and, besides, he will not be within calling distance. John, this thing cannot be done in a hurry. God help the dear girl--to find Piers false--to give him up--it will break her heart, Father!" "Kitty's heart is made of better stuff. When she finds out that Piers has been false to her, she will despise him." "She will make excuses for him." "No good woman will care about an unworthy man." "Then, God help the men, John! If that were so, there would be lots of them without any good woman to care for them." "Show Kitty that Piers is unworthy of her love, and I tell you she will put him out of her heart very quickly. I think I know Kitty." "Women do not love according to deserts, John. If a woman has a bad son or daughter, does she take it for comfort when they go away from her? No, indeed! She never once says, 'They were nothing but a sorrow and an expense, and I am glad to be rid of them.' She weeps, and she prays all the more for them, just because they were bad. And one kind of love is like another; so I will not speak ill of Piers to Kate; besides, I do not think ill of him. If she has to give him up, it will not be his fault; and I could not tell her 'he is no loss, Kate,'--and such nonsense as that,--for it would be nonsense." "What will you say then?" "I shall help her to remember everything pleasant about him, and to make excuses for him. Even if you put comfort on the lowest ground possible, no woman likes to think she has been fooled and deceived, and given her heart for worse than nothing. Nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a thousand would rather blame Fate or father or Fortune, or some other man or woman, than their own lover." "Women are queer. A man in such a case whistles or sings his heartache away with the thought,-- "'If she be not fair for me, What care I how fair she be?'" "You are slandering good men, John. Plenty of men would not give heart-room to such selfish love. They can live for the woman they love, and yet live apart from her. My advice is that we go back to Atheling at once. My heart is there already. Kitty and I were talking yesterday of the garden. The trees will soon be in blossom, and the birds busy building in them. Oh, John,-- "'The Spring's delight, In the cowslip bright, As she laughs to the warbling linnet! And a whistling thrush, On a white May bush, And his mate on the nest within it!'"