Yet it must still have been with her own aloofness, delicacy, difficulty of approach; the fires gleamed through the veil, but the veil was round them. He complained, it appeared, of her coldness, of the distance at which she kept him, at relapses into formality after hours of unreserved merriment. Mrs. Knyvett chid her; was he not the friend, the host, the benefactor? Within prudent bounds he should be handsomely encouraged—and rewarded. “Mother told me that well-bred girls knew how to make themselves respected without being prudish.” Maternal philosophy of an affectionately utilitarian order—one eye on present amenities, the other on grander prospects in the future! But was there no fear also in that maternal breast? Did the situation and the actors raise no apprehension? To some people—to how many? Some have maintained to all!—morality is not a master, but a good and ever vigilant servant. It preserves the things that are of real value, the marketable stuff. And it dignifies its watch and ward with such high names, such sacred and binding traditions, that—well, really, what between the august sanctions on the one hand and the enormous material advantages on the other, can it be dreamt of that any reasonable girl will forget herself? So one may suppose that Mrs. Knyvett reasoned. For what, after all, is the “leading article” in a girl’s stock-in-trade? Who, properly instructed, would sell that under market price, and so stand bankrupt? So much may be said in apology for Mrs. Knyvett’s blindness to her daughter’s peril; for in peril she was. Then an apology is needed for Arsenio? It would show a lack of humor to tender it; it is the last thing which those who have known and liked Monkey Valdez would think of doing. He was a “good Catholic” by tradition, and a gentleman by breeding; but he was an honest man only by fits and starts—when honesty appealed to his histrionic sense, when it afforded him the chance of a _beau geste_, when he felt himself under the eyes of the men with whom he had been brought up, who expect honesty even in dealings with women—at all events, with girls of their own caste; who draw a broad distinction between an intrigue and a seduction; who are, in fact (not to labor the subject), born and trained adepts in the niceties, some of them curious, of the code of honor, which is certainly not a religious rule or an ethical system, but may be considered to embody the laws of sex warfare, to be a Hague Convention between the sexes.