‘It is only too true. He and the mother are agreed. The girl is helpless, Signor Oriole is helpless, of course. This creature is enormously rich, and has tempted Signora Dietrich with a bait which she cannot resist. He is to pay her debts and give her some money--set her free, in fact--and Fulvia is to be handed over to him. It is a horrible situation.’ ‘You speak as if you had some personal concern in it,’ said Mrs. Charrington in her clear, incisive tones--cool, cutting, merciless. As those tones struck upon her ear, Minna felt how utterly illogical was her own position in the matter, how purely a thing not of reason, but of feeling, impulse, emotion. She realized that she had nothing to urge in her own defence if she should be attacked on the subject, and she clung all the more ardently to her attitude in the matter. It was another proof of the friendlessness, the forlornness, of poor Fulvia Dietrich that people should wonder why she, Minna Hastings, should concern herself with her affairs. Of course there was nothing to be gained by it but vexation and disappointment, and it is so foolish, so unspeakably foolish, to let one’s self encounter these things on behalf of one who can give nothing in return for the service--wild, quixotic, vain. She said nothing. ‘Don’t you think,’ continued Mrs. Charrington, in her most dulcet tones, ‘that on the whole you had better get out of it? It isn’t a nice sort of thing to be mixed up in.’ ‘I am not “mixed up” in it. I have nothing to do with it. I am sorry for the poor man who has made such a mess of his life. I pity the girl beyond all expression. It is pollution for an innocent young creature to be in the presence, even, of that man who she is told is to be her husband. I confess I can’t sit still and see a helpless thing writhe in torture without even putting out a hand to try and help. It is little enough that I can do. By coming to my studio for an hour or two every day she has less time to spend with him and her mother. And, so long as she is not actually married to him, I keep cherishing a hope that perhaps something may happen to break it off--if you call that being mixed up with it.’