“Of that relentless persecution of women, for instance, such as you practise it here in England, the great world knows positively nothing. In your blind vindictiveness you think of nothing but penalties, and you seem to walk over the battle-field of life with no other object or care than to search for the wounded and hold them up to shame and torture. Is it not so?” “I am sure you are right. We are all fal--fal--la--hie, not a doubt of it,” muttered M’Kinlay to himself. “And remember,” continued Sir Within, “it is precisely the higher organisations, the more finely-attuned temperaments, that are most exposed, and which, from the very excellence of their nature, demand our deepest care and solicitude. With what pains, for instance, would you put together the smashed fragments of a bit of rare Sèvres, concealing the junctures and hiding the flaws, while you would not waste a moment on a piece of vulgar crockery.” “Pitch it out o’ window at once!” said M’Kinlay, with an almost savage energy. “So it is. It is with this precious material, finely formed, beautiful in shape, and exquisite in colour, the world has to deal; and how natural that it should treat it with every solicitude and every tenderness. But the analogy holds further. Every connoisseur will tell you that the cracked or fissured porcelain is scarcely diminished in value by its fracture; that when skilfully repaired it actually is almost, if not altogether, worth what it was before.” M’Kinlay nodded; he was not quite clear how the conversation had turned upon porcelain, but the wine was exquisite, and he was content. “These opinions of mine meet little mercy down here, Mr. M’Kinlay; my neighbours call them Frenchified immoralities, and fifty other hard names; and as for myself, they do not scruple to aver that I am an old rake, come back to live on the recollection of his vices. I except, of course, our friends the Vyners--they judge, and they treat me differently; they are a charming family.” “Charming!” echoed the lawyer, and seeming by his action to drink their health to himself. “You know the old line, ‘He jests at wounds that never felt a scar;’ and so have I ever found that it is only amongst those who have suffered one meets true sympathy. What is this curious story”--here he dropped into a low, confidential voice--“about Miss C.? It is a by-gone now-a-days; but how was it? She was to have married a man who had a wife living; or, she did marry him, and discovered it as they were leaving the church? I forget exactly how it went--I mean the story--for I know nothing as to the fact.”