The virtues of narrow natures such as George's seem of no use to anyone except possibly to their owner. They are as great a stumbling-block to their weaker brethren, they cause as much pain, they choke the spiritual life as mercilessly, they engender as much scepticism in unreasoning minds, as certain gross vices. If we are unjust, it matters little to our victim what makes us so, or whether we have prayed to see aright, if for long years we have closed our eyes to unpalatable truths. George's disbelief in Janet's rectitude, which grew out of a deep sense of rectitude, had the same effect on her mind as if he had deliberately seduced and deserted her. The executioner reached the gallows of his victim by a clean path. That was the only difference. So much the better for him. The running noose for her was the same. Unreasoning belief in love and her fellow-creatures was followed by an equally unreasoning disbelief in both. Janet kept her promise. She held firm. Amid all the promises of the world, made only to be broken, kept only till the temptation to break them punctually arrived, amid all that débris one foolish promise remained intact, Janet's promise to Cuckoo. George married. Then, shortly afterwards, Fred married the eldest Miss Ford, and found great happiness. His bliss was at first painfully streaked with total abstinence, but he gradually eradicated this depressing element from his new home life. And in time his slight insolvent nature reached a kind of stability, through the love of the virtuous female prig, the "perfect lady," to whom he was all in all. Fred changed greatly for the better after his marriage, and in the end he actually repaid Stephen part of the money the latter had advanced to Monkey Brand, for Janet's sake. Janet lived with the young couple at first, but Mrs Fred did not like her. She knew vaguely, as did half the neighbourhood, that Janet had been mixed up in something discreditable, and that her engagement had been broken off on that account. Mrs Fred was, as we know, a person of the highest principles; and high principles naturally shrink from contact with any less exalted. Several months after the situation between the two women had become untenable, Janet decided to leave home. She had nowhere to go, and no money; so, like thousands of other women in a similar predicament, she decided to support herself by education. She had received no education herself, but that was not in her mind any bar to imparting it. Anne, who had kept in touch with her, interfered peremptorily at this point, and when Janet did finally leave home, it was to go to Anne's house in London, till "something turned up."