You must not ask me what happened. I have never been forced to study the methods of campaign which a woman adopts for such a purpose. No doubt she tried first of all to attract him innocently. Whatever success she had, poor Will is not free to marry where his heart leads him, unless his heart leads him where there is _some_ money (I have always, as you know, dreaded an entanglement with some girl whom he would _simply_ have to support all his life); and Will is too honourable to give any encouragement to some one he has no intention of marrying. You will understand me, too, when I say that _no_ one could have called it a very suitable alliance--for him or for _her_; it is no kindness to a girl to transport her from her own world, though--poor souls!--they all fancy that, if they can achieve a great match, they will be happy, and the rest will come by the light of nature. Goodness me, have we not seen that tragically disproved with Ruth Brackenbury and Kathleen Spenworth? Will and this girl had _nothing_ in common. If she married him, it would be over my dead body... If she did not see this, at least she saw that she was making no impression on my boy; and then I am sadly afraid that she deliberately laid herself out to tempt him. I have seen enough of life to know that, when a woman abandons herself to this kind of thing, very few even of the purest and best are proof against her _wiles_. This Molly had made up her mind to get a hold on Will; and, once she had decided on that, she would stop at nothing. I never knew a _thing_ at the time. When my boy suddenly arrived in London, when the mad clergyman followed him and _insisted_ on seeing Arthur, I thought that she would content herself with making him compromise her. If they could be discovered _kissing_ ... as they _were_... And that was all that even her father was allowed to know at the time, though she talked about a promise of marriage. But she was clever enough to know that she couldn't make a man marry her because he had kissed her... So far as I can see, there is no doubt at all... I did not ask Will, because I could not bear him to tell me an untruth; and the code ordains that a man must never admit such a thing, always the woman must be shielded. One did not need to be his mother in order to see that he was _worried_. Remorse... The sense that nothing could ever again be the same... _Hatred_ of himself... Hatred of _her_... And, all the while, I had to sit with my hands in my lap, seeing his health and happiness ruined. He could not eat, he could not _sleep_; Sir Appleton kept writing and telephoning to ask when Will was coming to see him, but there was no question of trying to find fresh _work_... And at any moment this wild man of the woods might _descend_ upon us again.