"I daresay you have ruined me. That's nothing to me. I am completely indifferent." She cried out: "Oh! Oh! . . . Oh!" on a note of agony. Tietjens said doggedly: "I don't care. I can't help it. Those are--those _should_ be--the conditions of life amongst decent people. When our next war comes I hope it will be fought out under those conditions. Let us, for God's sake, talk of the gallant enemy. Always. We have _got_ to plunder the French or millions of our people must starve: they have _got_ to resist us successfully or be wiped out. . . . It's the same with you and me. . . ." She exclaimed: "You mean to say that you don't think I was wicked when I . . . when I trepanned is what mother calls it? . . ." He said loudly: "_No_! . . . You had been let in for it by some brute. I have always held that a woman who has been let down by one man has the right--has the duty for the sake of her child--to let down a man. It becomes woman against man: against one man. I happened to be that one man: it was the will of God. But you were within your rights. I will never go back on that. Nothing will make me, ever!" She said: "And the others! And Perowne. . . . I know you'll say that anyone is justified in doing anything as long as they are open enough about it. . . . But it killed your mother. Do you disapprove of my having killed your mother? Or you consider that I have corrupted the child. . . ." Tietjens said: "I don't. . . . I want to speak to you about that." She exclaimed: "You _don't_. . . ." He said calmly: "You know I don't . . . while I was certain that I was going to be here to keep him straight and an Anglican I fought your influence over him. I'm obliged to you for having brought up of yourself the considerations that I may be killed and that I am ruined. I am. I could not raise a hundred pounds between now and to-morrow. I am, therefore, obviously not the man to have sole charge of the heir of Groby." Sylvia was saying: "Every penny I have is at your disposal. . . ." when the maid, Hullo Central, marched up to her master and placed a card in his hand. He said: "Tell him to wait five minutes in the drawing-room." Sylvia said: "Who is it?" Tietjens answered: "A man . . . Let's get this settled. I've never thought you corrupted the boy. You tried to teach him to tell white lies. On perfectly straight Papist lines. I have no objection to Papists and no objection to white lies for Papists. You told him once to put a frog in Marchant's bath. I've no objection to a boy's putting a frog in his nurse's bath, as such. But Marchant is an old woman, and the heir to Groby should respect old women always and old family servants in particular. . . . It hasn't, perhaps, struck you that the boy is heir to Groby. . . ." Sylvia said: "If . . . if your second brother is killed. . . . But your eldest brother . . ."