“I’m in your hands,” answered Ned. “I begin to find better every day you’re right, Knox. And what did she do when she heard he was down and out?” “Took a very proper line,” answered Philander. “Some, feeling what she feels and knowing that she’d done with him, for evermore, whatever happened, would have left him to stew in his own juice; but Medora, having a very fine pride, would have despised herself for any such littleness as that. I see as clear as day what was in her mind. She said to herself, ‘I’ve been a silly fool, and so has he. We were lost to sense and reality, and acted in a mad and improper manner. In fact, we’ve been everything we could be, except wicked, and silliness is often punished worse than wickedness. But, though Kellock richly deserved to lose his stroke, it’s as much my fault as his own that he has done so, and I’m too sporting to turn my back on him at such a moment. If he’s ruined, then it’s my hard duty to share his trouble, and I won’t be a rat and quit a sinking ship. That’s not the sort of woman Ned Dingle married.’ So Medora argued, no doubt—not knowing, of course, what you’ve said to Kellock. So she went to him, and they’ve gone to Totnes this evening along with Ernest Trood to see a doctor. Thus you see, for her proper and womanly behaviour, Medora will be rewarded—as we sometimes are if we do rightly—sooner or later.” “How rewarded?” asked Ned. “Why, by hearing presently from the man that you’re not going to divorce her. She plays her part to him and cheers him up and takes a hopeful view of the disaster, and so on; and then she hears what brought it all about—your strong line. Of course, to her ear—she being now a contrite creature with the scales fallen from her eyes—the fact that you wouldn’t set her free to marry him was the best music she could hear. She’ll know with you taking that line, she’ll be free of Kellock for evermore, and able to set about her own salvation in fear and trembling. And that, no doubt, is what she’ll do, for having paid for girlish faults, she’ll now cultivate her womanly virtues and become as fine a creature in mind as she is in body, and rise to be worthy of our admiration again.” Ned listened to this long speech while he sowed carrots. “These things don’t happen by chance,” concluded Knox. “A man like you bends fate to his own purpose; and fate, being a female, does a lot more for them that drive her than them that spoil her. You stand in a very strong position now, and the lucky thing is that the strong can be merciful to the weak without losing their self-respect.” “I’ll see Kellock,” promised Ned. “I’ll see him to-morrow and hear what he’s got to say about it.”